London: Despite losing her opening bout in the women's freestyle (55kg) category, India's Geeta Phogat is still in the medal contention after entering the repechage round where she will meet Tetyana Lazareva of Ukraine.
Geeta, who lost her first round match against world number two Tonya Lynn Verbeeek of Canada earlier on Thursday, entered the repechage round after the Canadian reached the final. According to the rules, wrestler who lost to the finalist goes through to the repechage round where the athlete needs to win two matches to win the bronze.
Geeta will wrestle in the repechage round with Lazareva and if she wins, she will proceed to the bronze medal play-off against Castillo Renteria of Colombia.
Earlier in the day, the 23-year-old Geeta - gold-medallist in the 2010 Commonwealth Games - went down to the Canadian who recorded a 4-2 victory.
Both grapplers started cautiously in the first period but Verbeek – who turns 35 next week – managed to eke out a point towards the end of the period, though the Indian was in an advantageous position. In the second period, Geeta raised her performance and won the round 1-0 to level score 1-1 after the first two periods.
But Verbeek – a teacher by profession – relied on all her experience to turn the table on the Indian by winning the third and final round 3-1.
"I fought hard and gave it all. She is a very strong wrestler and has a lot of experience, so it is not easy to defeat her," Phogat said after her match.
"I made a few mistakes in the first round. I had a clinch but still conceded that point. At this level, you have to get the point when you are in an advantageous position," she said. "I have to improve to be able to counter such high quality wrestlers. I will gain experience from all this and come back stronger," she said.
(With inputs from PTI)
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