Xian:
India's Gurpreet Singh and Sunil Kumar settled for a silver medal each in their respective Greco-Roman categories at the Asian Wrestling Championships in Xian on Saturday. On the penultimate day of the competition, India finished with just two silver in the Greco-Roman wrestling even as Prem missed out on a bronze medal finish. Gurpreet had to be satisfied with a second spot after being handed a 0-8 defeat by Hyeonwoo Kim of Korea in the final of the 77kg category. However, on his way to the final, Gurpreet put up an impressive show, thrashing Bakhit Sharif K Badr of Qatar 10-0 in the quarterfinals before eking out a narrow 6-5 victory over Tamerlan Shadukayev of Kazakhstan in the last four round.
In 87kg, Sunil Kumar stormed into the final after prevailing over Azamat Kustubayev of Kazakhstan 6-6 in his semifinal bout, while he had earlier beaten Tokhirdzhon Okhonov of Tajikistan 14-7 in the last eight stages. But just like Gurpreet, Sunil too failed to clinch the top spot as he went down to Hossein Ahmad Nouri of Iran in the title clash.
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Prem, who was another Indian wrestler in contention for a medal after he made the bronze-medal play-off in the 130kg class despite going down to Muminjon Abdullaev of Uzbekistan in the quarterfinals, could not finish on the podium.
Prem had made it to the playoffs after Abdullaev reached the gold medal round. Prem lost to Kazakhstan's Damir Kuzembayev in the third-fourth place fight. Earlier in the day, India's campaign got over in the 55kg and 63kg weight divisions when Manjeet and Vikram Krushnath Kurade lost their respective quarterfinal bouts to bow out of the tournament.
