Las Vegas (USA) -: Vishvajit More became the first Indian Greco-Roman wrestler to win a silver medal at the U23 World Championship while Komal and Diksha Malik remain in bronze medal conten-tion here. More, who already has two U23 World Championship bronze medals in his collection, was gunning for a historic gold but finished second after losing the fiercely fought final 12-13 to Georgia’s Koba Karumidze.
More opened his campaign with a close 10-8 win over Mex-ico’s Isaac Marin Mata and then beat Iranian U20 world champi-on Armin Shamsipour 8-1 in the quarterfinals. Shamsipour suffered a left shoulder injury during the bout, handing the Indian wres-tler an easy win.
More attempted a shoulder throw in the first period but could not execute the move properly. Later, More successfully rolled the Iranian for a four-pointer, which ap-peared to have caused Sham-sipour’s injury. The Iranian took a medical timeout, wincing in pain. He could offer no resistance during the final minute. More’s semifinal against Rus-sia’s Malik Gigiev was a close affair, and he prevailed 7-4.
The other Indian Greco-Ro-man wrestlers in the fray could not reach the medal round with Chetan (63kg) los-ing his pre-quarterfinal bout and Karan Kamboj (87kg) suf-fering a heavy technical superi-ority defeat in the qualification round. In the women’s event, Komal lost her semifinal by technical superiority to Ukraine’s Alina Filipovych and will now fight for bronze. Diksha Malik (76kg) is also alive in the bronze-medal race but Mansi Lather (68kg) bowed out after losing her quarterfinal 9-10 to Laura Godino from Italy. Mansi was trailing 1-8 at one stage but scored eight points in a row to take a 9-8 lead. Just as the bout was drawing to a close, Godino executed a double-leg attack with four seconds remaining for a two-point takedown to win the bout by one point.
