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Bronze Grappler Sushil Kumar became the second Indian to win a medal in wrestling after Kashabha Jadhav who had won bronze medal in 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games. It is after 56 years that India has won a medal in Wrestling. India had a very few hopes of winning another medal in the Beijing Olympics as almost all of the Indian players, except boxers, could not reach even the quarterfinal rounds of their respected games. No one had expected that Sushil Kumar will win a medal in wrestling after his first round loss to Andriy Stadnik of Ukraine. He could not give a tough challenge to the Ukrainian and was easily defeated by a big margin. Stadnik dominated during all of the rounds and Sushil proved out be a mismatch to his challenge. The final score was 8-1.

Repechage But in repechage he defeated three grapplers on the trot and thus converted a little hope of winning a medal into reality. He defeated Doug Schwab (USA), Albert Batyrov (Belarus) and finally Leonid Spiridonov (Kazakhstan) on the trot and thus won the bronze medal. He defeated world number 13 Doug Schwab (USA) by the margin of 3-1. In the first round he grabbed 4 points while Schwab could get only 1. But Schwab won the second round by 2-0. In the third round Sushil won 3 technical points as compared to Schwab’s 2 points. And thus He one the first bout.

Second Round In the second repechage round he fought against Albert Batyrov of Belarus. He won the first round by 1-0. But second round was won by Batyrov by 4-0. But in the third and decisive round Sushil bounced back and grabbed 7 points while Batyrov could not score any. Thus Sushil won the match by a huge margin of points.

Third Round But the third and the final repechage round was fought very closely as it is evident from the difference between the points gained by both of the grapplers. Sushil defeated Leonid Spiridonov of Kazakhstan in the third round. Sushil had grabbed to technical points in the first round as compared to Leonid’s one point.. In the second round none of them could gain a point. But Sushil won the third and decisive round by one point and while Leonid could not score any point.

It is the second time that Sushil has defeated Leonid. Earlier, he had defeated him in the 2006 Doha Asian Games. Delhi CM has announced a cash prize of 50 lakh for him.