CHENNAI: It was Tanu Sharma's maiden senior World Championships and she was up against experienced Wiktoria Choluj of Poland in the qualification round. The 26-year-old Polish wrestler used her experience to overpower the 20-year-old Indian 12-2 to make it to the next round of the 72kg weight category.
The loss on Wednesday served as a wake-up call to Tanu, who recently won a silver medal at the U20 World Championships. The Haryana wrestler gathered herself to win two back-to-back bouts a day later to finish on the podium. She first edged past 5-4 Zaineb Sghaier of Tunisia in the repechage round before defeating Precious Rosanna Bell of the USA 9-5 to pocket a bronze medal.
Daughter of a Sanskrit teacher, Tanu is the lone athlete in the family. Father Virendra Shastri is teaching in a government school while mother Suman Lata is a housewife. Tanu's elder sister Priyanka has completed MA B.Ed while her younger brother Aditya, a class XI student, is preparing for a career in medicine. More importantly, Tanu herself has cleared BA final year examinations recently.
It was her uncle Narendra Fauji, who initiated Tanu into wrestling and on Thursday he was a delighted man when she defeated the American wrestler to pocket a bronze medal. "We all, including my brother, were watching it live. The loss yesterday was hard but she is young and these defeats will teach her a lot," the father told this daily.
India's women's team coach Virender Dahiya too was delighted with his wards' performance. "Indian wrestlers (comprising the two men's teams — Greco-Roman and freestyle — and women's team) never won four medals in the same edition of the Worlds. But this year the women team did that alone. We won two silver yesterday. Today also Manisha assured the country a silver while Tanu finished with bronze," the coach said.
Heartbreak for Sujeet
Meanwhile, India's biggest medal hope Sujeet Kalkal suffered a heartbreak as he lost against Tajikistan's Abdulmazhid Kudiev in the men's 65kg quarterfinals (3-3 on criteria). It was Kudiev, whom Sujeet defeated in the Asian Games final, to clinch a gold but he couldn't repeat the feat in Astana. Kudiev too bowed out of the competition, ending Sujeet's campaign.
