Asian Games Wrestling: Sunil Kumar wins first greco-roman medal

Sunil won India's first Greco-Roman medal in 13 years at the Asian Games when he won the bronze in the 87kg category in Hangzhou, China on Wednesday.

India's last medals in Greco-Roman came in 2010 when Ravinder Singh (60kg) and Sunil Kumar Rana (66kg) won a bronze at the Guangzhou edition of the Asian Games.

Sunil was up against Atabek Azisbekov of Kyrgyzstan in the medal match, Sunil fought a strategic bout in which he defended well to deny his opponent a scoring opportunity.

Azisbekov got on board first with a passivity point in the first period. Sunil leveled the score on Azisbekov's passivity as a major part of the bronze play-off was move-less.

The Indian also successfully challenged the referee's two-point decision given in favor of Azisbekov, who had managed to push Sunil out but was not in control of the push-out move.

Earlier in the day, Sunil started his campaign with a close win of 4-3 over Fei Ping of China and he followed it up with a technical superiority victory over Tajikistan's Sukhrob Abdulkhaev.

Sunil lost 1-4 to reigning Asian Champion Naser Alizadeh of Iran and got out of the gold medal contention.

Other greco-roman wrestlers failed to register even one win in their categories. Gyanender (60kg), Neeraj (67kg) and Vikas (77kg) were knocked out in the first rounds.

Gyanender lost his opening bout 1-7 to Iran's Meysam Dalkhani, while Neeraj lost 3-5 to Uzbekistan's Makhmud Bakhshilloev. Vikas lost his bout by technical superiority to China's Rui Liu.

On Thursday, the two remaining Indian Greco-Roman wrestlers -- Narinder Cheema (97kg) and Naveen (130kg) -- will present their challenge.