NEW DELHI: Tokyo Olympian Deepak Punia settled for silver, while Viky clinched bronze as Indian grapplers ended their campaign at the Asian Wrestling Championships in Mongolia's Ulaanbaatar with 17 medals, with Ravi Dahiya being the lone gold winner, in the men's freestyle 57kg category. The haul included one gold, five silver and 11 bronze medals.
On the final day of the event on Sunday, Deepak got the 86kg men's freestyle silver after losing 1-6 to Kazakhstan's Azamat Dauletbekov in the title bout. The Indian's lone point came because of the Kazakh's passivity. It was Deepak's fourth medal at the Asian Championships, having won a silver (2021) and two bronze (2019, 2020) in the earlier editions. Deepak had reached the final without conceding a single point, defeating Iran's Mostafavi Alanjagh 6-0 in the quarters and South Korea's Gwanuk Kim 5-0 in the semis.
In the 92kg division, Viky secured a bronze after edging past Uzbekistan's Ajiniyaz Saparniyazov 5-3. In the 61kg category, Mangal Kadyan lost his bronze medal bout to his Kyrgyz opponent Ulukbek Zholdobeshkov 4-6 after outsmarting Kuwait's Almohaini 10-0 in the repechage round. The two other Indians in the fray - Yash (74kg) and Anirudh Kumar (125kg) - failed to cross the qualification stage.
