London: Indian male freestyle wrestlers started their Olympic campaign on a disappointing note as both young Amit Kumar and Narsingh Pancham Yadav crashed out of their respective categories in contrasting fashion at the ExCel centre on Friday.
While Amit’s campaign ended after losing in the second round of the repechage stage of the 55kg freestyle category, Narsingh bowed out in his opening bout of the 74kg division.
Amit, the youngest wrestler in the Indian contingent at 19, was handed a lifeline as he made it to the repechage stage after losing the quarterfinal bout.
But the Indian went down 0-3 to Radoslav Velikov of Bulgaria to lose out on a place in the bronze medal play-off tie.
Amit, however, started off well as he beat Asian champion Hassan Sabzali Rahimi of Iran in the pre-quarters before going down 1-3 to Georgia’s Vladimer Khinchegashvili rather tamely in the last eight.
But with the Georgian progressing to the final, Amit got another chance to have a crack at the bronze medal in the repechage.
Narsingh, however, had no such luck as his vanquisher, Matthew Judah Gentry of Canada also lost in the subsequent round in the 74kg freestyle category.
The wrestler from Mumbai lost 1-3 to the Canadian in the pre-quarters.
Earlier in the day, Amit started his campaign well with a hard-fought victory over Iran’s Rahimi in the last 16. After both wrestlers finished their contest on an even keel, the Indian got a 3-1 verdict in his favour.
Narsingh lost his pre-quarter final contest against Canada’s Matthew Judah Gentry, who scripted a comfortable 3-1 victory.
Gentry took control of the contest, winning the first period 3-0 on technical points and though the Indian fought better in the second round, it was not enough to stop the Canadian from progressing to the next round.
Gentry clearly appeared to be technically superior as he never allowed Narsing to pin him down nor give him any grip advantage. (PTI)
