Wrestler Sushil Kumar gave India one more reason to won cheer when he won the bronze medal in the freestyle 66kg category at the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday.
Sushil defeated Leonid Spiridonov of Kazakhstan 3-1 in the repechage match of the men’s freestyle wrestling 66kg to win India’s India’s first wrestling medal since the 1952 Helsinki Games.
Sushil Kumar (R) wrestles USA
He is only the second Indian wrestler after Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav to win an Olympic medal. Jadhav had won a bronze medal in the 1952 Games.
In the earlier rounds of repechage Sushil overcame the challenge of USA’s Doug Schwab and Belarrussian Albert Batyrov in the first two repechage rounds.
Sushil had lost to Ukrainian Andriy Stadnik in his quarter-final bout.
The gold medal was won by world champion Ramazan Sahin of Turkey while Stadnik had to be contend with the silver.
Sahin, who is also the European champion, won the bout 2-2, 2-1, 2-2.
The other bronze went to Otar Tushishvili of Georgia, a semi-final loser to Sahin.
This is also the first time since 1952 that India has two Olympic medals.
Earlier, Abhinav Bindra won first-ever Olympics gold medal for the country in the 10meter air rifle event.
Courtesy :- IBN Live
