Wrestler Sakshi Malik who qualified for Bronze medal fight in Women’s freestyle 58 kg won bronze medal. Indians who was dreaming for a medal for India was in dream during mid night. Sakshi made there dreams true. Sakshi lost her quarter-final match against the Russian player Valeria but Sakshi qualified the bronze medal fight Repechage chance.
Sakshi qualified for the repechage round when her conqueror in the quarterfinal, Valeria Koblova of Russia reached the final of the event. Valeria defeated Sakshi 9-2 in the last-eight contest.
Sakshi entered the medal-round after winning her Repechage round 2 comfortably against Mongolia’s Orkhon Purevdorj. Sakshi overpowered the Mongolian 12-3 in technical points.
Before that Sakshi made a winning start to her campaign, posting an impressive 5-4 win over her Swedish opponent, Malin Johanna Mattsson in the qualification round. In the pre-quarters , she registered a narrow win against Mariana Cherdivara Esanu of Republic of Moldov before losing her quarter-final.
Kyrgyzstan’s Aisuluu Tynybekova was leading 1st round of the bronze medal match but Sakshi made amazing come back in last 2 minutes of the match & won the first Olympic bronze medal for her & first for India in Rio Olympics. She become first female wrestler from India to win an Olympic medal.
This is 3rd Olympic wrestling bronze medal for India, Sushil (bronze) won repechage in 2008 Beijing, Yogeshwar (bronze) won repechage in 2012 London, now Sakshi (bronze) won repechage in 2016 Rio.