Aman Sehrawat will fight for bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics after he lost via technical superiority to the top-seeded Rei Higuchi of Japan in the men’s freestyle 57kg semi-final at the Champ-de-Mars Arena on Thursday.
In the bronze medal match, the Indian will face Puerto Rican wrestler Darian Cruz on Friday.
In the semi-final, Rei Higuchi dominated the bout right from the first whistle. The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics silver medalist scored four points in his first attack and continued to accumulate points throughout the first period. The match concluded in just two minutes and 14 seconds.
Sehrawat had a tough draw as Higuchi is a not only a former Olympic silver medallist but had missed out on the qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Games after missing the weight at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2021.
On his route to the semi-final, Sehrawat defeated North Macedonia’s Vladimir Egorov 10-0 in the opening round by technical superiority and followed it up with another 12-0 technical superiority victory against Zelimkhan Abakarov of Albania to qualify for the semi-final.
Sehrawat is the sole male Indian wrestler in Paris and made his Olympic debut on the back of a gold medal from the 2022 Under-23 World Championships, a title as the 2023 Asian Champion, and a bronze medal from last year’s Asian Games.
He had secured his spot in Paris during the World Wrestling Olympic Qualifiers in Istanbul.
Anshu Malik bows out
Anshu Malik, who was the other Indian in action on Thursday, lost her opening bout to USA’s Helen Maroulis in the women’s 57kg event. The Indian was handed a tough draw as she had to square off with the American who is a gold medalist from Rio 2016 and a bronze medallist from Tokyo 2020, in her very first round.
However, Malik’s campaign came to a decisive end on Thursday night as her hopes for repechage came to an end when Maroulis lost to the top-seeded Japanese Sakurai Tsugumi in the semi-final.
Malik had won a silver medal at the 2021 World Championships as well as the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. She had also collected four medals in the Asian Championships including both the junior and senior level.
Other than Sehrawat, the only other Indian wrestler to have an active campaign in the Olympics is Reetika Hooda in the women’s 76kg event.
On Wednesday, Antim Panghal (53kg) became the third Indian wrestler to exit the Games without a medal. Earlier, Nisha Dahiya’s (68kg) campaign concluded on Monday, and veteran wrestler Vinesh Phogat, who made history as the first Indian female wrestler to reach an Olympic final in the 50 kg category on Tuesday, was disqualified just hours before her gold medal match on Wednesday after being 100 grams over the weight limit.
