Babita, Yogeshwar strike gold

 After a day of missed opportunities, Indian grapplers rang in the celebrations again as Babita Kumari and Yogeshwar Dutt bagged gold in thumping fashion at the 20th Commonwealth Games here on Thursday.

Having lost in four finals on Wednesday following the three-gold show on Tuesday, pressure was on the Indian grapplers to stamp their class and Yogeshwar  and Babita led the assualt with scintillating displays.

While Yogeshwar, the London Olympics bronze-medallist, downed Canada’s Jevon Balfour 10-0 in quick time in his 65kg freestyle final bout, Babita, who took the mat first, powered past another Canadian Brittanee Laverdure 9-2 in the women’s 55kg freestyle match.

India also had a silver and a bronze on the day. Geetika Jhakar won the silver after losing to Canada’s Danielle Lappage in the final of the women’s 63kg class while Pawan Kumar defeated Pakistan’s Muhammad Inam to claim the bronze in the men’s 86 kg class.

Yogeshwar, the favourite, dominated Balfour from the word go. Showing great speed and superior skills, Yogeshwar rarely let the Canadian out of his grip, twisting and turning him like a towel in his trademark style.  Within no time, Yogeshwer opened  up a 10-0 lead, scoring a win by Great Superiority.

Babita too faced little difficulty in her bout against Brittanee. In the opening period she took a 5-0 lead and while Brittanee managed to eke out two points, Babita won four to seal the issue in her favour.
Yogeshwar was in a class of his own throughout the day. Using his trademark ‘fitele’ (leg-twisting) technique to great effect in all of his bouts, he just lept conjuring one commanding win after another.

First, in the round of 16, he beat Alex Gladkov of Scotland 4-0 as he rolled over the mat a few times by grabbing both the legs of his opponent to win the bout in style. Yogeshwar then easily defeated another Scottish wrestler Gareth Jones 4-0 in the quarterfinals to underline his form.

In the semifinal bout, Yogeshwar’s Sri Lankan opponent Chamara Perera seemed to be aware of the Indian’s trademark technique and once during the bout he managed to slip out of the grip of his opponent, who was trying to twist his legs.

Yogeshwar, however, was smart enough and he did not allow the Sri Lankan to escape the next time as he successfully used his favourite technique again to end the contest in two minutes and three seconds to power ahead.

Yogeshwar won with a 5-0 verdict after taking a 10-0 lead on technical points.
Babita, meanwhile, met a tougher opponent in her 55kg quarterfinal bout against host country’s Kathryn Marsh before finally emerging victorious 4-1.

Pawan took exactly two minutes to overpower Steve Hill of New Zealand 4-0 in his first bout of the day to enter the quarterfinals.  The Indian then overpowered Luigi Bianco of Scotland 5-0 before losing to Tamerlan Tagziev of Canada in the semifinals.