Picture : Twitter / ANI
Ravi Kumar Dahiya became only the second Indian wrestler to win a silver medal at the Olympics after losing in the men’s Freestyle 57kg title round 4-7 to reigning World champion Zavur Uguev, in Chiba, Japan. Dahiya had lost to Uguev at the 2019 World Championships also.
The two-time World champion was too good for the Indian, scoring the first point but pushing Dahiya out of the circle early and repeating thw tactic to go ahea 2-0.
Dahiya came back strongly with a superb takedown to level things at 2-2, only for Uguev to regain the lead with another takedown.
Down 2-4 after the first period of three minutes, Dahiya went on the attack at the start of the second period but again the Russian scored, pushing Dahiya out to pick another point and takes a 5-2 lead, with two minutes left.
The referee cautioned to Dahiya before the Russian scored another takedown to stretch his lead to 7-2.
With just 90 seconds left for the Indian to stage a comeback Dahiya earned two points with a takedown to reduce the margin to 4-7 with 60 seconds left.
But that was not enough as he went down 4-7.
The wrestler from Nahri village in Haryana had outclassed Colombia’s Tigreros Urbano (13-2) in his opener and then outwitted Bulgaria’s Georgi Valentinov Vangelov (14-4) in the quarter-finals.
