London Olympics: Amit Dahiya lucky to get another shot at bronze in repachage round, Narsingh Yadav out

Amit Kumar Dahiya, the youngest wrestler of the Indian contingent, was luckier than his teammate, Narsingh Pancham Yadav. Dahiya has got another chance to have a shot at bronze in repechage round at the Excel Arena on Friday, says a report in The DNA, adding that Narsingh was not as lucky in the 74kg category. The victor of his bout, Matthew Judah Gentry of Canada, was beaten comprehensively in the next round by Jordan Burroughs of the US.

Having lost his quarterfinal bout to Georgia’s Vladimer Khinchegashvili, Dahiya was back in contention after 40 minutes. The Georgian fended off a tough challenge from Japan’s Shinichi Yumoto to advance to the gold medal round.

Dahiya will now face the winner of the bout between Ibrahim Farag Abdelhakim Mohamed of Egypt and Radoslav Marinov Velikov of Bulgaria in repechage. Should he win, he’ll take on a much superior Japanese grappler Yumoto to finish on the podium.

Meanwhile a report in The Times Of India says that Indian male freestyle wrestlers started their Olympics 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,” says the report, adding that the Indian went down 0-3 to Radoslav Marinov 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-quarter finals 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.