India’s Sumit Sangwan cruised into the gold medal round of men’s 125kg Freestyle. (IE)

India’s Sumit Sangwan cruised into the gold medal round of men’s 125kg Freestyle on the final day of the Asian Wrestling Championship here. With the medal assured by Sumit, India have bettered their tally of nine in the last edition of the Asian Championship at Bangkok, Thailand. The heavyweight grappler showed his mettle on his way to the final as he faced little difficulty in overcoming his opponents during the quarterfinal and semifinal bouts.

In his first bout of the day, Sumit beat Taiki Yamamoto of Japan 6-3 in the quarters and then outplayed Farkhod Anakulov of Tajikistan7-2 in the semifinal to reach the gold medal round with much ease. He will take on Yadollah Mohammadkazem Mohebi of Iran in the final later in the evening. However, all the other Indian freestyle wrestlers in the fray today — Harphool (61kg), Vinod Kumar Omprakash (70kg) and Somveer (86kg) — bowed out early.

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Harphool went down fighting 6-7 to Rei Higuchi of Japan in the quarterfinal round to crash out of the tournament. The Indian wrestler though did well during his qualification bout, thrashing Divoshan Charles Fernando of Sri Lanka 11-0. Vinod Kumar Omprakash lost to Japan’s Momojiro Nakamura in the quarterfinal of men’s 70kg. Somveer bowed out of the competition after he was handed a 0-11 defeat by Gwanuk Kim of Korea in his qualification bout.