Glasgow, Aug 1:
Olympics bronze medallist Yogeshwar Dutt and Babita Kumari breezed their way to gold medals as wrestlers signed off on a high, while Vikas Gowda gave India its first athletics gold of the 20th Commonwealth Games by winning the men’s discuss throw event, here.
While Yogeshwar (men’s 65kg freestyle) and Babita Kumari (women’s 55kg) won golds yesterday, Geetika Jhakar (women’s 63kg) failed to match her compatriots and managed a silver on the wrestling mat for India.
Pawan Kumar also bagged a bronze in men’s 86kg freestyle wrestling to round off a fine show for the grapplers.
It was good news for in other disciplines as well as young Dipa Karmarkar scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman gymnast to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games by bagging a bronze in the vault event.
By virtue of two golds, one silver and two bronze medals, India have moved up to the fifth position in the medal standings with a total haul of 47 medals — 13 gold, 20 silver and 14 bronze.
England were at at the top of the chart with a total of 123 medals followed by Australia (113), Canada (65) and Scotland.
The Indians enjoyed a good outing on the final day of wrestling competition as Yogeshwar hardly broke sweat en route to his gold medal effort by using his trademark ‘fitele’ (leg-twisting) technique to great effect.
Yogeshwar first beat Alex Gladkov of Scotland 4-0 and then easily defeated another Scottish wrestler Gareth Jones in the quarterfinals by employing the same leg-twisting technique he had used while winning bronze in the London Olympics.
In the semifinals, Yogeshwar successfully used his favourite technique again to get the better of Sri Lanka’s Chamara Perera in just two minutes and three seconds.
Yogeshwar won with a 0-5 verdict after taking a 10-0 lead on technical points.
He continued his dominance in the final and made light work of his Canadian opponent Jevon Balfour to clinch the gold medal in just 1:53 seconds.
But it all started with Babita who completely dominated her gold medal bout against Brittanee Laverdure to seal the contest 9-2 in her favour and give India its first yellow metal of the day.
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