Astana [Kazakhstan], April 13 (ANI): Wrestler Aman Sehrawat clinched India’s first gold medal on the Asian Wrestling Championships 2023 in Astana, Kazakhstan on Thursday.
Sehrawat claimed the gold medal within the 57 kg class, defeating Kyrgyzstan’s Almaz Smanbekov within the remaining conflict.
Sehrawat, who grew to become the primary Indian wrestler to win gold on the U-23 world championships in Spain final 12 months, topped the rostrum within the males’s 57kg freestyle class on the penultimate day of the competitors.
In the quarter-finals, the Indian wrestler defeated Japan’s Rikuto Arai 7-1. Aman Sehrawat defeated China’s Zou Wanhao within the semi-finals 7-4.
Aman Sehrawat received the gold medal after defeating Smanbekov, a bronze medalist from the earlier 12 months, 9-4 within the remaining.
“I came here for the gold. There was no other ranking position I wanted to settle for. I made two mistakes in the final. I did watch Almaz’s bouts before the final and figured that he relies a lot on counters. But I rushed to score. I thought to myself that I don’t get tired easily so I kept trying to score. In the process, I got countered twice. After that, I put my head down and focused,” Aman Sehrawat was quoted as saying by Olympics.com after the ultimate win.
This was Sehrawat’s second podium of the 12 months. He had received bronze on the Zagreb Open again in January.
Sehrawat’s victory in Astana ensured that India retained the lads’s freestyle 57kg gold medal for the fourth 12 months in a row. Ravi Kumar Dahiya, a silver medalist on the Tokyo Olympics, received the class in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Ravi Dahiya was compelled to withdraw from this 12 months’s Asian Championships as a consequence of an harm, and Aman Sehrawat took his place within the Indian contingent after qualifying by choice trials.
Meanwhile, Anuj Kumar (65kg) and Mulayam Yadav (70kg) misplaced within the quarter-finals and the repechage spherical respectively.
This was India’s twelfth medal within the competitors. The Greco-Roman wrestlers received 4 medals whereas the ladies’s wrestlers bagged seven. (ANI)