2 days ago
Budapest Wrestling Ranking Series: Antim, Sujeet turn up with gold; Women wrestlers win team title
Indian wrestlers ended the Polyák Imre & Varga János Memorial 2025 Ranking Series in Budapest with a total of nine medals across men's freestyle, men's greco-roman and women's wrestling. The Indian women's team won the team title with 130 points defeating USA with two gold, two silver, and two bronze medals while the male freestyle wrestlers ended up with one gold and one bronze medal and India won a solitary silver medal in the men's greco-roman.
In the women's wrestling, Olympian Antim Panghal in 53kg and youngster Harshita in 72 kg won the two gold medals for India while Priya Malik in 76 kg category and Neha Sangwan in the 57 kg category won the silver medal. In the 50kg category, Neelam secured bronze with a win over Kseniya Stankevich of Belarus and in the 62 kg, Asian champion Manisha Bhanwala earned a bronze.
Antim claimed gold in the 53kg category with a 7-4 win over Russia's Natalia Malysheva. This marked Antim's second Ranking Series gold in a row, following her title-winning run at the Ulaanbaatar Open in Mongolia last month. Harshita added the second gold medal for India in the 72kg category with a dominant 10-0 victory over four-time Asian champion Zhamila Bakbergenova of Kazakhstan.
In the 57kg category, Neha Sangwan had to settle for silver after a defeat via pinfall to Olympic champion Helen Maroulis of the USA.
In the men's freestyle, Sujeet Kalkal had a stunning start to the campaign defeating 2024 Paris Olympics bronze medallist Islam Dudaev of Albania 11-0. Then, he defeated European silver medallist Khazmat Arsamerzouev of France 11-0 in the next round. In the semi-final, he won 6-1 against European bronze medallist Vazgen Tevanyan of Armenia.
Sujeet won the title after defeating another European bronze medallist Ali Rahimzade of Azerbaijan 5-1 in the final making it is his first senior medal of 2025.
In the 57kg category, Rahul won the bronze medal defeating Niklas Stechele of Germany 4-0. Earlier, he lost to U20 World Champion Luke Lilledahl of USA in a tight match in the semi-final with a scoreline of 6-7.
Sumit was the lone medallist in the men's greco-roman category with a silver medal after he lost to European champion Nihat Mammadli of Azerbaijan 1-5 in the 60 kg final.
The Budapest Ranking Series is the final stop on the 2025 calendar, with ranking points from the event impacting seedings for the World Wrestling Championships to be held in Zagreb, Croatia in September.
