Pinki to fight for bronze after losing heart-stopping semi-final
Indian wrestler Pinki nearly pinned her German rival Nina Hemmer before losing the heart-stopping 55kg semi-final 6-8 to miss out on a historic final at the World Championship, here on Monday.
In a fast-paced action-packed semifinal, Pinki trailed 0-4 after Hemmer effected a take-down move and followed that up with a quick gut wrench.The 2020 Asian champion Pinki kept looking for her moves and found one from a right leg-attack, pushing the back of the German on the mat for two points.She kept Hemmer in tight grip and held her in that position for more than a minute but the referees were not convinced to give away a ‘fall’ result.
After the breather, Pinki levelled the score and then took a 6-4 lead with consecutive takedowns but Hemmer again refused to throw in the towel and pulled off two more twopointers to emerge winner.
No Indian woman wrestler has ever played a World Championship final.Geeta Phogat (2012), Babita Phogat (2012), Pooja Dhanda (2018) and Vinesh Phogat (2019) are the only four Indian woman wrestlers to have won bronze medals at the World Championship.In her previous bouts, Pinki was confident in her 5-0 win over Korea’s Kim Soyeon in the qualification round and later pinned Kazakhstan’s Aisha Ualishan to progress to semifinals.
Earlier in the day, Rohit pulled off a smart four-pointer en route to a technical superiority win over Turkey’s Selahattin Kilicsallayan to progress to the men’s freestyle 65kg bronze medal play-off.
Rohit took the mat for his repechage round and initially struggled to find an attacking move as he was largely busy defending and was trailing 1-2.
However, towards the end of the first period, he employed a double-leg attack and converted that into a pointer to take a 5-2 lead. His style changed dramatically in the second period as he made move after move to take a winning lead.
He will face Mongolia’s Tulga Tumur Ochir in the bronze playoff in the evening session.
However, Satywart Kadian (97kg) and Sushil (70kg) lost their qualification rounds to Korea’s Minwon Seo and Georgia’s Zurabi Iakobishvili respectively.