World number one Bajrang Punia logged 10 points in a row in the gold medal bout to reclaim his Asian Championship crown, while Praveen Rana settled for silver as India ended the first day with three medals, here Tuesday.
Punia defeatedKazakhstan’s Sayatbek Okassov 12-7 in a nail-biting 65kg men’s free style.
The CWG and AsianGames champion was trailing 2-7 with just 60 seconds to go for the final bellbut the unperturbed Indian produced three gut wrench moves and an exposure moveto take eight points after he began the attack with a two-point take down.
The Kazkah wasvisibly tired while Bajrang displayed immense stamina and intelligence underpressure to emerge triumphant.
It is Bajrang’ssecond gold at the championship, having won one in 2017. Overall, it was thefifth medal for the Indian in this tournament.
With this performance, Bajrang yet again sounded a warningto his opponents that he will be astrong medal contender at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
On his way to the final, Bajrang had conceded just onepoint.
He defeatedUzbekistan’s Sirojiddin Khasanov 12-1 in the semi-final before winning bytechnical superiority against Charles Fern of Sri Lanka. He beat Peyman Biabaniof Iran 6-0.
Parveen Rana won hisfirst big medal in seven years though he missed out on the top prize. Praveen,who won a bronze in this championship in 2012, lost the 79kg gold medal bout0-3 to 2017 world championships bronze medallist Bahman Mohammad Teymouri ofIran.
Rana had won a close3-2 semifinal against Kazakhstan’s Galymzhan Usserbayev.
Satywart Kadian lostto Batzul Ulziisaikhan in the 97kg quarterfinal bout but went on to make thecut after his Mongolian rival reached the final. He won the bronze play-off 8-1against Haobin Gao of China.
Meanwhile, in the57kg weight division, Ravi Kumar entered the bronze medal play-off round afterwinning his repechage against Chia Tso Liu of Taipei 4-0 but lost the medalbout 3-5 to Yuki Takahashi of Japan.
Rajneesh bowed out of the tournament early in 70kg category.