Rajender Kumar wins 55kg wrestling gold for India
India won another gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth Games Greco-Roman wrestling competition at the Indira Gandhi Sports Complex in New Delhi on Thursday.
Rajender Kumar claimed the host nation's only title of the day to make up for the disappointing setbacks of his compatriots on Wednesday. He crushed Pakistan's Azhar Hussain 11-0 in the men's 55-kilogram
division final to win India's fourth gold medal of the competition after the host nation swept the first three events on Tuesday.
Rajender won the gold medal despite taking a blow to the face.
"Personally I was never trained by my guru to play foul. My bleeding nose was a problem but I managed to deal with it," he said.
Promise Mwenga of Canada won the bronze medal.
Rajender's victory somewhat made up for the losses of his countrymen.
Sunil Kumar was expected to win a title but the fancied Indian was upset by England's Myroslav Dykun in their qualification bout in the 66kg division.
The Ukrainian-born Dykun pinned Canada's Jack Bond in the final to become the first English wrestler to win a CWG gold medal since Noel Loban in 1986.
"I feel great. I knew I had a chance here because I had such a good training camp in Russia before coming out. Everything has gone so well. Now I can look forward to London 2012," Dykun said.
Sunil salvaged some pride by claiming the bronze medal.
England team manager Shaun Morley was delighted with Dykun's performance. "We know he is a world class athlete and he performed above and beyond expectations today," he said.
In the 84kg final, Joe Agbonavbare of Nigeria stunned Manoj Kumar 7-2 to win the gold medal.
Nigerian coach Igali Braladei praised Agbonavbare following his defeat of the two-time Commonwealth champion.
"It is a thing of joy to have your athletes do well in an international championships," he said.
In the 120kg gold-medal bout, Australian Ivan Popov defeated Nigeria's Talaram Mamman 8-0.
The 24-year-old, son of former Russian Olympic medallist Vladimir Popov, won Australia's first CWG wrestling gold medal since Zsigmond Kelevitz achieved the feat in 1978. Popov earlier defeated local
favourite Dharmender Dalal in the semi-finals.
Indian coach Hargobind Singh said Dalal’s loss was expected. "Dharmender was suffering from a knee and shoulder injury and that’s why his training suffered a lot. Today his chances to win gold were probably
about 50-50," he said.
Dalal went on to win the bronze medal.
Tags: