2019 World Wrestling Championships: Ravi Kumar makes his way to Tokyo Olympics

Ravi Kumar Dahiya became the first Indian male grappler to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics 2020 by beating Yuki Takahashi of Japan in style at the ongoing World Wrestling Championships in Nur Sultan. Ravi showed no mercy to the multiple-time World Championships medallist from Japan as he won 6-1 in the quarter-finals and made it to the last 4, thus sealing a berth at the upcoming Olympics.
Not only did he sealed the berth at Tokyo Olympics, but also won a medal in Wrestling for India at Tokyo Olympics by defeating Kazakhstan's Niruslam Sanayev on victory by fall in Semi final.

The first period of the quarter-final bout saw a gritty defensive battle with Ravi doing enough to hold his own against Takahashi and taking a lead of 2-0. He had a good start to the second half as well as he snatched another 2 points to lead 4-1 over Takahashi. Then, with 10 seconds remaining, he claimed two more points by turning defence into attack swiftly and sealed the win!

Competing in the men's 57kg category, Ravi was on superb form right from the start of the day. In the first round, he completed a technical superiority win (11-0) over Sunggwon Kim of Korea within the first period of the bout. However, in the pre-quarters, he had his task cut out.

Ravi, who won the silver medal at the U-23 World Championships last year, was trailing 0-4 down within the first couple of minutes to Arsen Harutyunyan of Armenia. Soon, it the score read 0-6 in favour of Armenian. However, after that, the Indian took complete control of the bout and snatched 17 points with a couple of impressive ankle locks and takedowns. Eventually, he beat Arsen 17-6 to move to the quarters.

The impressive youngster, however, lost in his semifinal bout against defending world champion Zaur Uguev of Russia 4-6. He will wrestle for the bronze medal in another bout on Friday.