Last Panghal got 2024 Olympic quota with bronze medal

BELGRADE (Uttam Hindu News): Indian female wrestler Anant Panghal won the bronze medal by defeating two-time European champion Emma Jonna Denise Malmgren of Sweden in the women’s 53 kg event at the World Wrestling Championships 2023. In this match played on Thursday in Belgrade, Serbia, Panghal has secured the Paris 2024 Olympic quota by winning the bronze medal. This is the country’s first quota in wrestling for the upcoming edition of the Summer Games. According to the report of Olympic.com, two-time Under-20 World Champion Anhalt Panghal put pressure on Jonna Malmgren and won the bronze medal match 16-6 on the basis of technical superiority.

Earlier, Panghal had defeated 2022 world champion Dominic Olivia Parrish of America 3-2 in the preliminary round. The Indian wrestler had won by technical superiority over Poland’s Roksana Marta Zasina in the round of 16 before registering a 9-6 win against Russia’s Natalia Malysheva in the quarterfinals.
However, Panghal lost to Belarus’s Vanessa Kaladzinskaya by a 5-4 margin in the women’s 53kg freestyle semi-final at the World Wrestling Championships 2023.

Meanwhile, 2019 Asian Championships silver medalists Gurpreet Singh (77kg) and Ajay (55kg) lost their round of 32 bouts in Greco-Roman wrestling in Belgrade on Thursday. Sajan (82kg) and Mehar Singh (130kg), the first Indian Greco-Roman medalists at the Under-23 World Championships, could not progress beyond the qualification round. Earlier, 10 Indian male freestyle wrestlers competing in Belgrade failed to win medals and no male wrestler could secure an Olympic quota.

India’s men’s 70kg freestyle wrestler Abhimanyu lost the bronze medal match to Armenia’s Arman Andreasyan after which he missed out on a medal. This was a non-Olympic quota event. Meanwhile, Manisha (62 kg), Priyanka (68 kg) and Jyoti Berwal (72 kg) failed to make it to the medal matches in their respective women’s freestyle categories. Indian wrestlers are competing in the tournament under the United World Wrestling flag as the Wrestling Federation of India is suspended.