U23 Wrestling World Championships | Pooja Gehlot bags India’s second silver

Pooja Gehlot (53kg) had to settle for a silver medal after going down to Japan's 2017 world champion Haruna Okuno in the summit clash of the UWW Under-23 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. Gehlot lost 0-2 to Okuno in the final and added another silver to India’s tally after Ravinder (61kg) also won silver earlier this week. 

Three-time World Junior Championships medallist Sajan Bhanwal (77kg), however, lost a closely fought semi-final bout 4-5 against Kodai Sakuraba of Japan. He will now aim to win a medal in his bronze-medal bout on Saturday. A terrific display by Bhanwal saw him blank Jesse Alexander Porter of the USA 6-0 in the qualifiers to move into the pre-quarter-finals, where he notched up a 3-1 win over Azerbaijan's Tunjay Vazirzade. Bhanwal, one of the best Greco-Roman talents to have emerged from India, then qualified for the semi-finals on the back of a strong 6-2 win over Per Albin Olofsson of Sweden. 

Among other Greco-Roman results, Arjun Halakurki (55kg) entered repechage even after he lost in the quarter-finals 12-14 to Emin Narimanovitch Sefershaev of Russia. But with the Russian making it to the summit showdown, Halakurki has received another chance. Earlier he had beaten Giovanni Freni of Italy 13-9 in the qualifiers and convincingly got past Sebastian Kolompar of Serbia 9-0 in the pre-quarter-finals. 

Sunil Kumar (87kg) advanced to the pre-quarter-finals after a 7-2 victory over Algeria's Sid Azara. In the next round, he was defeated by Ukraine's Semen Novikov in a 0-8 loss. In 63kg, Rajeet was shown the door by top seed Slavik Galstyan 0-8 in his opening bout. In 130kg, Deepak Poonia could not make much of an impact and succumbed to a 1-6 defeat at the hands of David Tate Orndorff of the USA in the qualification round.