Gold for wrestler Martin

AMATEUR wrestler Martin Erasmus bagged South Africa’s 12th gold medal of the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, beating India’s Mausam Khatri in their 97kg freestyle bout yesterday.

Erasmus was in a different class in his heavyweight fight with Khatri, scoring the first point before the South African completely rolled him over winning with a 12-2 margin on technical superiority. He is the first South African since the 1958 Empire Games to win a wrestling gold medal at the quadrennial showpiece.

“I didn’t expect the gold medal. I took it match for match, and then succeeded so I thank the Lord for that,” Erasmus said.

“He (Khatri) was tough and I think he had a knee injury but that is not my problem.”

Erasmus has been on fire during throughout his campaign, winning all his matches leading up to the final on technical superiority.

His build-up to the final included a 12-1 victory over Johannesburg-born Nicolaas Verreynne in the quarter-final.

Erasmus achieved what team-mate Hanru Botha could not do the day before when he lost his 74kg gold-medal match against former world champion Sushil Kumar of India. Kumar won his third consecutive title, relegating Botha to the silver medal with a 10-0 win on technical superiority.

Kleinjan Combrinck also came close to a wrestling medal but missed out on the 57kg bronze-medal bout against Nigeria’s Ebikwenimo Welson.

Chasing a second straight women’s pair gold medal, lawn bowls duo Nicolene Neal and Colleen Piketh had to be content with the silver after going down 15-14 to Malaysia.

South Africa’s bowlers finished the competition in sixth place with a total of five medals – three silvers and two bronzes – with gold eluding them this time around.

Both bowlers were looking to upgrade their medals from earlier in the week after Piketh won the singles bronze and Neal earned silver with the women’s four.

South Africa’s hockey teams would like to forget these Games as quickly possible with the men’s side finishing 10th, their worst position at six editions while the women dropped two places since Glasgow 2014.

The men lost to Wales 3-2 in their classification match. The Proteas women finished sixth overall, suffering a 3-1 defeat to Canada in their final outing

In diving, Julia Vincent finished fourth in the women’s 1m springboard final.