Sunil Kumar from India ended the country’s dry stint of 27 years without a gold medal in the Greco-Roman category. The event took place in New Delhi on the 18th of February and he beat his opponent Azat Salidinov of Kyrgyzstan 5-0 top clinch the victory. Before this win the last winner from India was Pappu Yadav, he won a gold medal in the 48kg Greco-Roman title in 1993 for India. For the major part of the match, Sunil with his comprehensive defense had an upper hand. Salidinov was left clueless and he finally went down without a fight back. In the earlier part of the competition, Sunil has made an impressive comeback.
In the semifinal, Sunil was down 1-8 against his opponent Azamat Kustubayev from Kazakh but eventually, Sunil went on to win the match by getting 11 points on the trot. In last year’s event, Sunil Kumar had managed to reach finals but he ended up winning a silver medal. He stated that he was ecstatic to win a Gold medal for India and he also stated that he worked really hard on his ground techniques and it feels great to be on the winning side. There were other participants too from India like Arjun Halakurki (55kg), Mehar Singh (130kg), Sajan, and Sachin Rana.
