Wrestling | Sarita Mor waltzes into the semis

Sarita Mor shocked defending champion Linda Morais en route to the semifinals while Anshu Malik too advanced to the last-four stage of the wrestling World Championship here on Wednesday.

Sarita, the reigning Asian champion, had a tough opening bout against the 2019 World Champion from Canada but came out trumps with a tactical 8-2 win in the 59kg pre-quarterfinals.

Quick take-down

A quick take-down move, followed by an expose together with some superb defence put Sarita 7-0 ahead by the time first period was over.

Later, the quarterfinal against Germany’s Sandra Paruszewski turned out to be a tougher bout, in which the two wrestlers were largely restricted to a standing fight which took a lot out of them.

There was only one point-scoring move, a take down effected by Sarita late in the match and that sealed the outcome.

Hardly troubled

In the 57kg, young Anshu lived up to the expectations with confident victories. She was hardly troubled by Kazakhstan’s Nilufar Raimova, whom she beat by technical superiority and later outwitted Mongolia’s Davaachimeg Erkhembayar 5-1 in the quarterfinals.

The results: 53kg: Repechage: Luisa Elizabeth Melendres (Ecu) bt Pooja Jatt by fall.

57kg: Quarterfinals: Anshu Malik bt Davaachimeg Erkhembayar (Mon) 5-1; Pre-quarterfinals: Anshu bt Nilufar Raimova (Kaz) by technical technical superiority.

59kg: Quarterfinals: Sarita Mor bt Sandra Paruszewski (Ger) 3-1; Pre-quarterfinals: Sarita bt Linda Morais (Can) 8-2.

68kg: Qualification: Anastasiia Lavrenchuk (Ukr) bt Ritu Malik by fall.

72kg: Quarterfinals: Masako Furuich (Jpn) bt Divya Kakran by technical superiority; Qualification: Divya bt Kseniia Burakova (Rus) by fall.

76kg: Repechage: Kiran bt Aysegul Ozbege (Tur) 2-0.