Bishkek: Taking full advantage of small-sized draws, Mainsha grabbed a gold and Reetika finished second-best in the three-wrestler competition, while battle-hardened Sarita Mor settled for a bronze as Indian women grapplers signed off with three medals from the UWW Ranking Series event here on Saturday. Sarita did not lose a single point en route the 59kg semifinals, beating Turkey's Ebru Dagbasi 4-0 and Kazakshtan's Diana Kayumova 7-0.
The semifinal was also a close contest but she lost 4-5 to Ukraine's Solomiia Vynnyk. In the third-place play-off, the world championship bronze winner defeated Kayumova again and this time by technical superiority and without conceding a point to win India's first medal in the women's competition. "The preparation was good. Not having a national camp did not impact my training. I lost to the Ukrainian girl in a mini-second, she pulled off a tow-pointer in dying moment. She took risk and it paid off," Sarita told PTI.
"I lost four points in last 30 seconds actually but there was no complacency," she added. Asked why she chose to compete in 59kg when recently she had said that she will only compete in 57kg, Sarita said, she did not want to cut weight so close to Asian Games trials. "The trials are just 20 days away, so I did not want to go through the pain of weight-cut process. Also, when I saw the draw, the wrestlers who compete in 57kg, were all part of the 59kg draw, so it was like competing in 57kg without cutting weight," she said.
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In the five-wrestler 65kg draw, Manisha produced a dominating show by winning all three bouts by technical superiority en route the final. She began with a win over Kazakshtan's Irina Kazyulina and followed that up with victories over another Kazakh in Gaukhar Mukatay and Purevsuren Ulziisaikhan from Mongolia without losing a single point. In her final round match, she prevailed 6-2 over Ukraine's Yuliia Leskovets.
In the three-wrestler 72kg competition, Reetika won 7-0 against Italy's Dalma Caneva but lost 0-4 to Kazakhstan's Zhamila Bakbergenova to claim a silver medal. In the 50kg, Neelam made an exit following a crushing defeat by fall against China's Ziqi Feng. Later the Chinese lost her semifinal clash, ending Neelam's chances to get back into the competition through the repechage route. In the 53kg, India was represented by Pooja as Vinesh Phogat decided not to compete due to their protest against outgoing WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
Pooja could not score a single point against China's Meiying Jiang, losing the qualification bout 0-4. In the 55kg category, Sito, who is coming up from the junior rank, could not win a single bout and ended fifth in the six-wrestler draw. In the men's freestyle competition, Deepak (97kg) and Anirudh Kumar (125kg) failed to reach the medal rounds in their respective categories. India has so far won four medals from the tournament with Manjeet (55kg) winning a bronze in the Greco Roman competition.
