India’s Greco-Roman wrestlers got off to a disappointing start at the 1st OG World Olympic Qualifying tournament on Friday, as none of them could make it to the medal round in their respective weight categories in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
In the previous tournament last month – the Asian Olympic Qualification tournament – Hardeep (98kg) created history by becoming the first Indian Greco-Roman wrestler to secure an Olympic berth after the 2004 Athens Games, when Mausam Khatri had made the cut.
But Hardeep’s qualification failed to inspire others and everyone in the fray on Friday went down at the early stages of the competition itself to bow out of the tournament.
Now they are left with just one chance to book a ticket to Rio Games at the the last Olympic qualifier – 2nd World Qualification tournament – scheduled to be held at Istanbul, Turkey from 6-8 May.
Gaurav Sharma (59kg), Ravinder Khatri (85kg) and Naveen (130kg) crashed out of the tournament after going down in their respective pre-quarterfinal bouts, while Ravinder (66kg) and Harpreet Singh (75kg) failed to even clear the qualification round hurdle.
Gaurav lost to Peter Modos of Hungary 0-12 in his pre-quarterfinal bout, even though he had defeated Jesse David of Thielke of (USA) 6-5 in his qualification round.
Khatri was beaten by Askhat Dilmukhamedov of Kazakhstan 0-6 and Armenia’s Edgar Khachatryan thrashed Naveen 8-0 in pre-quarters.
Ravinder and Harpreet went down to Kazakhstan’s Mirambek Ainagulov 1-10 and Romania’s Ilie Cojocari 4-7, respectively in their qualification bout.
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