AMMAN (JORDAN), Mar 30:
Deepak Punia won his third silver medal at the Asian Championship and fifth overall while Udit settled for his second successive runner-up finish at the continental event on the concluding day of the event, here on Sunday.
The 25-year-old Punia, who could not qualify for the Paris Olympics, began his comeback with a hard-fought contest against Bekzat Rakhimov in 92kg category. He faced stiff resistance from his Kyrgyzstan rival but prevailed 12-7 in a high-scoring quarterfinal.
Japan’s Takashi Ishiguro was supposed to be a tough rival but Deepak outplayed him to comfortably win 8-1..
In the gold medal bout against Iran’s world number one Amirhossein B Firouzpourbandpei, Deepak lost the first point for stepping out. He hardly made a move in the first two minutes of the opening period, conceding two more points on takedown. The 2019 World Championship silver medallist remained over defence throughout and kept losing point after point to suffer a tame defeat by technical superiority in the end.
Deepak had won silver medal at the Asian championships in 2021 (Almaty) and 2022 (Ulaanbaatar) apart from bagging bronze in 2019 and 2020.
Udit (61kg) blanked China’s Wanhao Zou 2-0 after prevailing 9-6 against Bekbolot Myrzanzar Uulu from Kyrgyzstan. (PTI)
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