Asian Wrestling Championship: India recorded their best ever medal haul

India won a record-breaking 20 medals in the New Delhi bound Asian Wrestling Championships held at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium. The previous record was 16 medals at the last edition of the tournament in Xi’an in China.

India also occupied the top spot of the team rankings in men’s freestyle at 95 points, followed by Iran at 83 points and Kyrgyzstan was placed at 3rd place with 65 points.

The players who won gold in the tournament are Ravi Dahiya (57kg) in men’s freestyle, Sunil Kumar (87kg) in Greco-Roman, and Divya Kakran (68kg), Sarita Mor (59kg) and Pinki (55kg) in women’s competition.

The home team also bagged 6 silver and 9 bronze medals in the six-day tournament that concluded on Sunday.

The silver medallists include Nirmala Devi (50kg), Sakshi Malik (65kg) in women’s competition and Bajrang Punia (65kg), Satywart Kadian (97kg), Gaurav Baliyan(79kg) and Jitender (74kg) won silver respectively in men’s freestyle.

The bronze medallists include Arjun(55 kg), Ashu(67kg), Hardeep (97kg), Aditya Kundu (72kg) in Greco-Roman, Vinesh Phogat (53kg), Gurusharan Kaur (72kg) and Anshu Malik (57kg) in women’s wrestling and Rahul Aware (61kg) and Deepak Punia (86kg) in men’s freestyle.

The Indian women’s team performed much better than the last Asian Championships but ended up at the second spot in the team rankings with 180 points, 29 points behind Japan. The Greco-Roman team, though, ended up at the 5th spot in the team rankings.

It was also Divya Kakkran, Sarita Mor, Pinki, Sunil Kumar and Ravi Dahiya’s maiden Asian Championships titles.