Thaindian News

London, Aug 9 (IANS) India’s Geeta Phogat lost her opening wrestling bout, while woman high jumper Sahana Kumari’s plunge was short of taking her to the final in the London Olympics here Thursday.

Late Wednesday night, boxer Laishram Devendro Singh bowed out from the men’s quarter-final stage after a brave fight, ending India’s campaign in the competition at the Excel Arena.

Geeta, 23, was defeated 1-3 by Tonya Lynn Verbeek of Canada in the opening round of the Olympic women’s 55kg wrestling event.

The Haryana girl, who won the country’s first ever gold medal in women’s wrestling in the 55kg category at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, fought evenly with her opponent in the first two rounds. When the second round got over, both westlers were on one point each.

However, Verbeek, a two-time Olympic medallist, went on the offensive in the final round to advance to the quarter-finals, while Phogat will now battle it our in the repechage. Tonya, 34, was a silver medallist in Athens Olympics and bronze medal winner at the Beijing Games.

Geeta’s bronze medal chances brightened after Tonya won her quarter-final and semi-final bouts to reach the final, where she will be up against Japanese Saori Yoshida. Geeta will face Ukraine’s Tetyana Lazareva in the first repechage round.

In boxing, Devendro narrowly missed out on a medal, going down to Irishman Paddy Barnes in the quarter-finals of the men’s 49kg category.

His 18-23 loss to the Beijing Games bronze medallist ended India’s boxing campaign in the mega event. While woman boxer Mary Kom got a bronze, none of her male counterparts could finish in the medal bracket.

In track and field, 30-year-old Sahana quite easily cleared her first jump of 1.80 metres but had three failed attempts at 1.85m that put an end to her campaign.

Sahana, who holds the national record with a lunge of 1.92m, could only manage the 15th place in group B.

Svetlana Radzivil of Uzbekistan was the lone jumper to get automatic qualification by clearing the 1.96m mark. Later in the day, Tintu Luka would be seen in action in the Women’s 800 metres semi-final.