India’s Manju Kumari won the bronze medal with a 2-0 victory over Ilona Prokopevniuk of Ukraine in the Junior World Wrestling Championship in Tampere, Finland on Thursday. However, Divya Tomar (44kg), Nandini Salokhe (51kg) and Pooja Devi (67kg) failed to make it to the medal round.
Manju, competing in 59kg, started her campaign off with a dominating 5-1 victory over Bulgaria’s Aleksandrina Nikolaeva Kashinova in the 1/8 stage but was outclassed 0-10 by Japan’s Yuzuru Kumano in her quarterfinal bout.
However, with the Japanese girl advancing to the final, Manju got another life in the form of repechage and she did not waste the opportunity.
In her repechage bout, Manju got the better of Tianna Grace Kennett of Canada 4-0 to storm into the bronze-medal play-offs.
Tomar, meanwhile, missed out on a place in the bronze- medal round of 44kg after losing her repechage bout to Fatme Ibraimova Mandeva of Bulgaria 2-2 narrowly.
On Wednesday night, Deepak Punia failed to finish on the podium after going down to Gadzhimurad Magomedsaidov of Azerbaijan in the bronze-medal match of men’s 84kg freestyle.
