New Delhi, Aug 6:
India’s Sajan bagged a bronze medal in Greco-Roman category after defeating Ali Osman Erbay of Turkey at the Junior World Wrestling Championships in Tampere, Finland.
Sajan defeated the Turkish grappler 6-1 in Greco-Roman 74kg class in a third-fourth place match to finish on the podium. He is the lone Indian Greco-Roman wrestler to bag a medal at this championship.
Earlier, Sajan did not have an ideal start to his campaign as he lost his very first bout against Akzhol Makhmudov 2-10.
But the Indian got a chance to fight in repechage round after the Kyrgyzstani grappler reached the gold medal bout.
He had to fight two repechage rounds and Sajan beat both his rivals rather comfortably.
Sajan first got the better of Per Anders Kure of Norway 11-2 before outplaying Iran’s Mohammad Pareviz Neiazi 14-4 to win the bronze medal.
However, another Indian, Manish (60kg) missed out on a third-place finish narrowly after he went down to Hassan Ahmed Mohamed of Egypt 3-4 in the bronze medal round.
Meanwhile, it was curtains for all other Indians in the fray today. Vijay (55kg), Dinesh (66kg), Sunil Kumar (84kg) and Satish (120kg) all crashed out of the tournament after losing in the initial rounds of their respective bouts. PTI