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Ashu, Aditya Kundu and Hardeep won a bronze medal each in their respective weight categories as Indian wrestlers bagged five medals in Greco-Roman events of the Asian Wrestling Championships on Wednesday.
While Ashu won a bronze in the 67kg category, Aditya and Hardeep also bagged medals of the same colour in the 72kg and 97kg respectively on the second day of the competitions.
Later in the evening, Hardeep beat Kyrgyzstan's Beksultan Makhamadzhanovich Makhmudov 3-1 to register India's third podium finish of the day.
India has so far five medals in the Championships, after Sunil Kumar's historic gold in 87kg and Arjun Halakurki's bronze in 55kg Greco-Roman category on Tuesday.
The other bronze in 60kg was won by Mehdi Seifollah Mohsen Nejad who beat Kazakhstan's Aidos Sultangali 4-3.
The other bronze in the 67kg category was won by Iran's Hossein Nasrollah Assadi Kolmati, who beat Japan's Tsuchika Shimoyamada 5-3, while the gold medal went to Korea's Hansu Ryu, who defeated Uzbekistan's Makhmud Bakhshilloev 4-1.
The gold in this weight division was won by Amin Yavar Kaviyaninejad of Iran with an 8-0 win over Ibragim Magomadoc of Kazakhstan.
In the 97kg weight division, Uzbekistan's Muhammadali Shamsiddinov got the better of Thailand's Ponlawat Saimmai inside 20 seconds to win the other bronze with a 4-0 scoreline. The gold in this category was bagged by Mohammadhadi Abdollah Saravi of Iran, who defeated Seyeol Lee of Korea.
"It feels great to earn a bronze medal in my first-ever senior championship. I lost my semi-final bout as I invested a lot of time on attacking, which I worked upon in this bout with more emphasis on defence. I am happy that things panned out as planned," said an elated Ashu after his win.
On the other hand, this was Aditya's first Asian Championship and his second ever international tournament.
"It feels good to have won the bronze medal. I lost out on my gold medal match but I am happy I could play as per my strategy in this game and win the bout," he said.
Hardeep, who clinched India's third and final bronze medal of the day, said he will keep on working on ground technique.
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