Sunday, August 12, 2012

India at Olympics 2012- Day 15

Day 15 must be the most successful day for India in this Olympics. India had only one event in the whole day  and it was ultimately successful.
India's Yogeshwar Dutt participated in 60 kg free style wrestling. I was not very keen to watch the match, because I don't wanted to witness again what happened to Amit Kumar. Little then did I know that Yogeshwar is little more tough guy than Amit.While could not do much in repechage round, thanks to his safe playing opponent and unfavorable luck, Yogeshwar did a fabulous job.
Yogeshwar did fare in his first round. In pre-quarter finals, as I was worried, he across the world champion. He fought well but that was just not enough. Fortunately his Russian opponent did well enough to reach finals creating an opportunity for the Indian to be back in the medal run.
Yogeshwar had to go a hard way to make it to the Bronze medal. Since he lost in the 2nd round itself, he had to fight with all the opponents who lost to the Russian wrestler.
I didn't get to see the first repechage bout where he had to fight to wrestler who lost to the Russian in the first round itself. Apparently Yogeshwar was lucky to get the favorable clinch position after the rounds tied. He managed to score just enough to make it to the 2nd repechage round.
I am not great fan of the way the clinch position is decided. It is totally based on luck. And you must be a great fool to loose this favorable opportunity. Moreover, there is no chance to make a comeback. Just one move, who ever grabs the opportunity (mostly the wrestler who has favorable clinch position), wins the round. I believe if in 1st round say a red wrestler is offered favorable clinch position, then next time, it should go to the other wrestler to make it an equal opportunity game. But somehow that doesn't happen. Why, is out of my understanding.
Anyway, coming back to Yogeshwar, if he was lucky enough to score points in clinch in 1st repechage round, I guess he was equally fool enough to loose points from favorable clinch position in the 2nd repechage round.
In the first round of the 2nd repechage game, Yogeshwar took the advantage of the favorable clinch position to almost pick up and throw his opponent on the mat. But his opponent was smart enough to keep a firm grip on Yogeshwar, and as soon as he was on the mat, he rolled over to get the back of Yogeshwar on the mat. I did not understand what exactly was happening there, but initially Yogeshwar was given 3 points, but after his opponent challenged the decision, it was reversed to give 3 points to the opponent. It was really confusing.
But then Yogeshwar had a tough task of winning next two rounds to make it to the bronze medal round. And he did that comprehensively. I found Yogeshwar as a wrestler who actually makes moves like picking, rolling and throwing opponent side ways on the floor. It was just fantastic to see Yogeshwar winning this fight and making it to the bronze medal round.
 The final round was going to be tough for Yogeshwar, since his opponent was on advantage that he directly came for the fight fresh while Yogeshwar had to play 2 fights each of 6 minutes in last 40 minutes. And he indeed was not fit. It was difficult to look at him. His left eye was swollen enough to close the eye.
The opponent from North Korea was also god. He won the first round easily scoring single point. In the 2nd round Yogeshwar managed to score point to equalise the rounds. The third round was the most important. Now while watching previous fights, all time I was wondering, why Yogeshwar is putting his head between his opponents legs. It used to look so weird.  Ultimately Yogeshwar himself gave the answer.
In one of the moves, after throwing the North Korean wrestler on the floor, when he once again put his head between his legs, I had no clue what amazing thing I am about to witness.
It was the initiation of the move. He converted this into a move where legs of the opponent are cross locked and the control is in your hand. And you try to put pressure to cross his legs more, the opponent is forced to flip to uncross the legs. Every such clip cost him a point because he need to roll over his back every time he tried to uncross his leg. Yogeshwar's grip on his opponents leg was so strong that he forced his opponent to roll over 5-6 times consecutively and won the fight even before scheduled 2 minutes.
 It was really wonderful performance by Yogeshwar and the fact he had to fight back right from scratch to win this medal makes it even bigger.
         This is one of the best performance by any Indian sportsman in such a big event and Yogeshwar totally deserves all the accolades.



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