Manisha gets gold, Reetika a silver

Bishkek, June 3

Taking full advantage of small-sized draws, Manisha grabbed a gold and Reetika finished second-best in the three-wrestler competition, while the battle-hardened Sarita Mor settled for a bronze as Indian women grapplers signed off with three medals at the UWW Ranking Series tournament here today.

Sarita did not lose a single point en route the 59kg semifinals, beating Turkey’s Ebru Dagbasi 4-0 and Kazakhstan’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 playoff, the World Championship bronze winner defeated Kayumova again, 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 said later. “I lost four points in last 30 seconds actually but there was no complacency.”

Asked why she chose to compete in the 59kg category after recently saying that she would compete only in the 57kg class Sarita said she did not want to cut weight so close to the 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.

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 Kazakhstan’s Irina Kazyulina and followed that with victories over another Kazakh, 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.