World Wrestling Championships 2022: Nisha Dahiya loses bronze medal match after injury; Naveen in repechage round

Indian women wrestler Nisha Dahiya lost her repechage bronze medal match against Canada’s Linda Morais by fall after the 24-year-old India injured her feet right before her rival made the most out of the situation in Belgrade on Thursday.

The 24-year-old Indian was off to an explosive start in the bout as she took a 4-0 lead in a single move by the opening minute. Nisha was comfortably maintaining her lead in the first half before an attacking move by Morais led to Nisha probably twisting her ankle.

The Indian could be seen shouting in pain as the Canadian pounced on Nisha to finish a winning move by fall to take the bronze medal.

It was a sad end to a strong campaign by World No. 65, who displayed fine form during the course of the competition as she defeated higher-ranked opponents. Nisha opened the qualification round campaign with a dominant 11-0 win over World No. 20 Danute Domikaitye (Lithuania). She backed it up with a 13-8 win over No. 5 Adela Hanzlikcova (Czech Republic) to reach the quarterfinals.

Facing No. 8 Sofiya Georgieva (Bulgaria) in the encounter, Nisha continued her dominance with another 11-0 win to storm into the semifinals.

Her gold medal hopes, however, were dashed in the semis by reigning U-20 World Champion Ami Ishii (Japan), who defeated the Indian in a closely-fought battle 5-4. Nisha, however, was at fault for losing the lead twice in the match, especially with Ishii’s winning point coming in the closing minute of the bout.

Among other international medals, Nisha earlier this year won a silver medal at the UWW Ranking event Zouhaier Sghaier in Tunisia while she won the U-23 World Championship bronze medal last year in Serbia.

Naveen Malik qualifies for repechage round after first round defeat

In the men’s 70kg freestyle events on Thursday, Commonwealth Games champion Naveen Malik lost to Taishi Narikuni of Japan 1-6 in 70kg though his opponent had no technical superiority.

Deepak beat Dan Or Tsesarsky of Israel 10-0 in a victory by technical superiority but lost to Bekzod Abdurkhmonov of Uzbekistan 2-13 in his next bout in 79kg.

In 86kg, Sanjeet Kundu was ahead for most of his opening bout against Tarzan Maisuradze of Georgia but conceded a takedown with 34 seconds remaining to suffer a 4-4 loss.

In 125kg, Dinesh began with a qualification round 11-4 win over Catriel Pehuen Muriel of Argentina but was no match to Olympic silver medalist Geno Petriashvili of Georgia.

(With inputs from PTI)

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