South Asian Games gold medallist Manju outsmarted Sonali to emerge as the new National champion in the women’s 58kg class on the opening day of the National wrestling championship at the Nandini Nagar College Sports Complex here on Sunday.
Giving a commanding performance in the final, Manju exhibited her power and alertness to push Sonali out of the mat to open her account. The Haryana girl continued to keep her opponent from Maharashtra under pressure to extend her lead to 10-0 and win the gold medal in the first period itself.
In the keenly-contested 66kg Greco Roman title clash, Ravinder rallied to beat his Haryana rival Manish 6-4.
Manish had gone 2-0 up because of Ravinder’s passive approach. However, Ravinder pushed Manish out of the ring to level the scores and later overcame stiff resistance to win the bout in the last few seconds.
Ritu Phogat joined her famous sisters by clinching the women’s 48kg title.
Maharashtra girl Reshma’s emphatic performance helped her clinch the top honour in 63kg.
In 57kg freestyle weight, Rio Games Olympian and current Asian champion Sandeep Tomar got the better of Utkarsh Kale, who defeated former World championship silver medallist Amit Kumar early, to take the gold medal. Amit settled for the bronze.
Former Worlds bronze medallist Bajrang Punia had no problems in claiming the 65kg gold.
The results: Men: Freestyle: 57kg: 1. Sandeep Tomar, 2. Utkarsh Kale, 3. Amit Kumar and Pankaj Kumar; 65kg: 1. Bajrang Punia, 2. Rahul Mann, 3. Rajneesh Dalal and Surjeet; 74kg: 1. Jitender, 2. Sandeep Kate, 3. Satpal and Dinesh Kumar.
Greco Roman: 66kg: 1. Ravinder, 2. Manish, 3. Deepak Ujjwal and Sudesh Sena; 75kg: 1. Gurpreet, 2. Dinesh, 3. Rajbir and H. Pawar; 85kg: 1. Pratipal, 2. Jaspal, 3. Anil Kumar and Sandeep Kumar.
Women: 48kg: 1. Ritu Phogat, 2. Priyanka, 3. Nirmala and Pooja; 58kg: 1. Manju, 2. Sonali, 3. Nisha and Apoorva; 63kg: 1. Reshma, 2. Gargi Yadav, 3. Pooja Tomar and Ritu Malik.
