SUJEET Kalkal’s World Championships jinx continued witha heart breaking quarter final defeat but Manisha Bhanwala kept India’s elusive world champion dream alive with a dominant run into the women’s 59kg final, winning two bouts by fall and conceding not asingle point in her other contest hereon Thursday. Manisha ended the day with acommanding semi-final performance against Kazakhstan’s Altyn Shagayeva, taking a 10-0 lead before pinning her opponent to set up agold medal clash against Pan American champion Abigail Elizabeth Nette. Aday after Neelam Sirohi (50kg) and Kajal Dhochak (76kg) settled for silver medals, Manisha became the third Indian wrestler to reach the gold medal bout at the on going edition, giving the countryan other opportunity to end its wait for aworld champion. Manisha opted to compete in the non-Olympic 59kg category --even though she had competed in the 57kg and 62 kg categories in the past -- and the ploy worked.

 

The seasoned Indian maintained tight control over the semi-final, leading 3-0 at the end of the first period. Her strong defence frustrated Shagayeva, who could not launch asingle attack against the Indian. The decisiv emove came in the second period. From an arm-locked position, Manisha turned and threw the Kazakh wrestler onto themat for afour-point move before holding her in an iron grip to secure the fall. The score stood at 10-0 when the bout ended. Earlier,Manisha had beaten Canada’s Laurence Beauregard by fall before registering a comfortable 6-0 victory over Mongolia’s Bolortuya Khurelkhuuin the quarter-finals. For Manisha, the result is the culmination of years of hardwork following the disappointment of the Asian Games, where she had expected to win gold but returned without amedal. “I was sure to win Asian Games but, as luck would have it, I lost to arival despite wrestling well, and unfortunately, she also lost, so I returned empty-handed.”