Narsingh Pancham Yadav secured an Olympic quota place for India after bagging a bronze medal in men’s 74 KG freestyle category giving the country a reason to smile at the World Wrestling Championship.
The third place finish Narsingh became the lone Indian to win a medal at the prestigious tournament and as well to book a berth for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
This is the first time that an Indian wrestler has earned an Olympic berth with a medal at World Wrestling Championship. Other than Narsingh India had a poor show overall in the championship which concluded today as no else could make it to the podium.
Besides Narsingh the other Indians in the fray were Amit Kumar (57KG), Arun Kumar (70KG) and Sumit(125KG) who could not progress beyond quarterfinals stage.
Narsingh came up with some dominating performances defeating Hanoc Rachamin of Israel 14-2 before getting the better of Soner Demirtas of Turkey 4-3 and Cuba’s Livan Lopez Azcuy 16-5 to advance to the semifinal.
In the semi-finals, Narsingh went down to Unurbat Purevjav of Mongolia. In the bronze medal match, Narsingh outplayed Zelimkhan Khadjiev of France 12-8 to win a medal for the country.
As far as Arun is concerned, he did well to beat Can of Vietnam and Radulov of Ukraine 5-4 to enter into the quarter-finals. In the quarterfinals, Arun lost to Malcolm Green. Sumit also lost in the round of 16. Amit Kumar lost in the pre-quarter finals match.