Asian Wrestling Championships: Ravi Dahiya’s gold brings cheer after Bajrang Punia finished with silver

NEW DELHI: If you are gunning for gold at the Tokyo Olympics, you better deliver it with golden performances. After defending champion Bajrang Punia failed in his endeavour, settling for a silver in his 65kg category, fast-rising Ravi Dahiya ensured that the national anthem reverberated across the KD Jadhav wrestling arena at the IGI stadium here.
Ravi, the under-23 World Championships' silver medallist, pulled off a dominant 10-0 victory on ‘technical superiority’ over Tajikistan's Vohidov Hikmatullo to win gold in the 57kg category.He had won a bronze in the previous edition of the Asian meet in Nur-Sultan.
Ravi’s gold ended Indian wrestlers’ streak of silver medals on the fifth day of competitions at the ongoing Asian Championship. Satyawart Kadian (97kg) and Gourav Baliyan (79kg) had settled for silver apart from Bajrang, while Naveen (70kg) conceded defeat in his bronze medal playoff.
In the 97kg final, Satyawart lost 0-10 to Iran's Mojtaba Goleji, while Gourav was humbled 5-7 by Kyrgyzstan's Arsaian Budazhapov as the duo settled or silver.
Ravi was in his elements on Saturday, never allowing his competitors to settle down. He constantly moved around the mat, scoring points with his quick ‘in-and-out’ leg attack, solid defence and forcing his opponents off the mat.
He faced the biggest challenge of getting past the likes of former world champion, Japan’s Yuki Takahashi, and fellow World Championships' bronze medallist, Kazakhstan’s Sanayev Nurislam, in the initial rounds. Once he did that – beating Takahashi (14-5) and Nurislam (7-2) – Ravi did not let the gold slip from his grasp.
“I had faced both of them earlier, so I was confident of beating them. I just followed my routine and didn’t experiment much. I wanted to win the gold in front of the home crowd. I am confident of winning a medal at the Olympics too,” said Ravi, who had beaten Nurislam 6-0 in 61 kg category at the Rome ranking series event in January last.
Bajrang’s 2-10 loss in the 65kg final to much-superior and technically sound Takuto Otoguro of Japan somewhat took the sheen off what has been a creditable performance by host wrestlers. Bajrang has been touted as India’s biggest medal hope in wrestling at the Tokyo Games, but his recent performances haven’t been giving the kind of confidence which one should expect from a champion grappler, who also happens to be the world No. 2 in his weight category.
An athlete can have a bad day in office, but the way Bajrang lost the plot against Otoguro was disheartening. In the morning session, Bajrang had won all three of his matches by technical fall, including a 10-0 win over Iran’s Amirhossein Maghsoudi in the semifinals.
Bajrang, the reigning CWG and Asian Games champion, had won gold in the Rome series, but all his victories were hard-fought, with little to separate him and his opponents.
For the record, Saturday’s bout was the rematch of the 2018 World Championships final in Nur-Sultan, where Otoguro had prevailed 16-9 in a thriller. That classical bout was hailed as the ‘Match of the Year’ by the wrestling’s world body, UWW. Sadly, the same thriller and classic was missing on Saturday.