While an injured Deepak Punia (86kg) h to settle for silver medal, Rahul Aware clinched a bronze in 61kg to finish India’s best-ever World Wrestling Championships campaign with five medals that includes one silver and four bronze at Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan tonight. A day after becoming youngest Indian wrestler to enter final of this prestigious tournament, an ankle injury put paid to 19-year-old Deepak Punia’s hopes of fighting for gold. youngster, who is also reigning world junior champion, h injured his ankle during his first bout last night which got aggravated during course of day. That necessitated his withdrawal from final where gold went to Olympic and world champion and Hassan Aliazam Yazdani Charati of Iran.

Punia clinches Silver; Aware wins Bronze

“I am a bit disappointed that I couldn’t fight for gold but I am happy with my overall performance here. I will work hard and aim is to win a medal in Olympics,” said Deepak Punia. biggest achievement of Rahul Aware’s career came after he beat Tyler Lee Graff of USA 11-4 in 61kg n-Olympic category bronze medal bout. Even though Commonwealth Games gold medallist was trailing by 2 points initially, he me a quick turnaround and stormed back to le 4-2. In second period, Aware’s aggression helped him score points easily for a 10-2 le before completing victory.

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India's best-ever campaign

Punia and Aware were fourth and fifth wrestlers, respectively to d medals to India’s tally this time which helped contingent better its previous record haul of three medals in 2013 World Wrestling Championships. Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia, and Ravi Kumar Dahiya are ors who won a bronze in this edition. last three along with Deepak Punia also bagged Olympic quotas for country from World Championships which was first qualifier for 2020 Games. With kind of confident performances Indian grapplers have put up, a lot can be expected of m in Tokyo next year.

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