India’s Gurpreet Singh and Harpreet Singh entered the bronze medal play-off round of their respective Greco-Roman weight divisions at the Asian Wrestling Championship, which commenced on Wednesday.
While Gurpreet (75kg) had to win a repechage round to make the cut, Harpreet (80kg) reached the bronze medal round when his opponent, who had beaten him in the quarterfinal, entered the gold medal round.
Harpreet got off to a fine start, beating Yuya Maeta of Japan 2-1 in the qualification round, but went down to June- Hyoung Kim of Korea 0-8 in the quarters.
But with the Korean making the gold medal round, Harpreet will get a chance to finish on the podium when he faces Junjie Na of China later in the day.
Gurpreet, meanwhile, entered the bronze medal round after getting the better of Burgo Beishaliev of Kyrgyzstan in his repechage bout.
Gurpreet had earlier lost to Maxat Yerezhepov 6-8 in the quarterfinal but since the grappler from Kazakhstan reached the gold medal round, the Indian got another opportunity.
The Indian though did well in his qualification bout, beating Dilshodjon Turdiev of Uzbekistan 6-4.
He will now take on Bin Yang of China in the bronze medal play-off match.
However, it was curtains for the other three Indian Greco-Roman wrestlers – Ravinder (66kg), Hardeep (98kg) and Naveen (130kg) – who were competing on Wednesday.
Despite getting a chance to fight a repechage bout, Hardeep failed to make use of it and lost to Yerulan Iskakov of Kazakhstan 0-9.
Earlier, he was beaten by Iran’s Seyed Mostafa Seyedghanbar Salehizadeh 0-5 in the quarters.
Ravinder lost in the quarterfinal round 3-5 after going down to Ali Reizollah Arsalan of Iran, while Muminjon Abdullaev of Uzbekistan defeated Naveen 2-1 in the qualification round.
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