India At Beijing Olympics : Wrestler Sushil Kumar Wins Bronze in 66KG

Sushil Kumar of India Winning Bronze in 66KG Category : PICTURES

Sushil Kumar of India Winning Bronze
Sushil Kumar of India against Doug Schwab of USA
Sushil Kumar of India against Albert Batyrov of Belarus
Sushil Kumar of India VS Leonid Spiridonov of Kazakhstan

Wrestler Sushil Kumar provided an unexpected boost to India's Olympic campaign by clinching bronze medal after beating Kazakhstan's Leonid Spiridonov in the repechage match of the men's freestyle wrestling 66kg class here on Wednesday (20th August 2008).

Earlier, India's Sushil Kumar lost ion the first round to Ukraine’s Andriy Stadnik in the men's 66 kg freestyle event.

Sushil also thwarted the challenge from American Doug Schwab and Belarrussian Albert Batyrov in the first two repechage rounds.

Sushil is only the second Indian wrestler to win the wrestling bronze after Kashabha Jadhav had returned with the medal in 1952 Helsinki Games.

Image Courtsey : AP Photo and Indiatimes.com

60kg Free Style Wrestling : India's Yogeshwar Dutt Loses To Kenichi Yumoto Of Japan

Another Olympic medal slipped out of India's wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt missed his lead in the third and final round to lose the wrestling quarterfinal tie of the 60kg free style category against Kenichi Yumoto of Japan.

Dutt made a good start to his bout winning the first round 1-0 but Kenichi Yumoto bounced back to win the second, earning 4 points to draw parity.


Yogeshwar Dutt again seized the initiative early in the decisive third round, going ahead 1-0 but failed to hold on to the lead in the last 10 seconds and gave away two match-winning points to his opponent to lose 2-1.

Earlier in the day, Dutt had beaten Kazakhstan's Baurzhan Orazgaliyeb 3-1.

Swedish Wrestler Ara Abrahamian Throws Down Bronze Medal

Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian threw down his greco-roman bronze medal in protest on Thursday after his bid for Olympic gold was ended by a decision denounced by the Swedish coach as "politics".

Abrahamian took the bronze from around his neck during the medal ceremony, stepped from the podium and dropped it in the middle of the wrestling mat then walked off.

"I don't care about this medal. I wanted gold," he said.

A bitter Abrahamian, silver medallist at Athens 2004 who had high hopes of top honours in the 84kg competition in Beijing, announced he was quitting the sport.

"This will be my last match. I wanted to take gold, so I consider this Olympics a failure," he said.

Abrahamian later said he believed his loss to the eventual gold medallist Minguzzi was "totally unjustified". The wrestler said his friends "called me just 20 minutes before the [bronze] competition, begging me to compete".

"I decided that I had come this far and didn't want to let them down, so I wrestled," he said.

Image Courtsey: Rediff.com and Reuters