Erasmus’ outstanding technical skill helps him achieve wrestling gold

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

Erasmus was in a different class in his 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 became 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, 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.”

The South African’s build-up to the final included a 12-1 victory over Johannesburg-born Australian Nicolaas Verreynne in the quarterfinal.

Erasmus achieved what team-mate Hanru Botha could not do the day before when he lost his 74-kilogram goldmedal match against former world champion Sushil Kumar of India.

Kumar won his third consecutive title relegating the South African 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 with after Piketh won the singles bronze medal while Neal won silver with the women’s four.

The duo grabbed the early advantage opening up a 7-0 lead after three ends but the Malaysian pair of Emma Firyana Saroji and Siti Zalina Ahmad bounced back with aplomb.

“We started off well, getting off to a good start, then maybe the green started to change pace wise and that is maybe when they started to put it in a bit closer,” Piketh said.

“We had a chance in the end, but they won and congratulations to them.”

The Malaysians fought their way back from a 13-5 deficit to beat South Africa by one shot in the 18-end encounter.

“Bowls is very unpredictable, so you can never be over-confident either,” Piketh said.

“You just have to carry on doing what you have been doing in past.”

Rio Olympic diver Julia Vincent narrowly missed out on a podium place in the women’s 1m springboard final.

She finished in fourth place with a scored of 247.40 with the bronze-medal winner scoring 252.95.