Olympics Star Sushil Kumar brought smiles on the faces of millions of Indians across the globe by giving the country its second medal of the Beijing Olympics after Abhinav Bindra brought home the Gold earlier. Indian grappler Sushil, bagged a bronze in wrestlings 66 kg freestyle event exactly 56 years after KD Jadhav brought glory at Helsinki in 1952 and Indian grappler Sushil Kumar won the 1^st repachage round against American Doug Schwab and pinned down Belarussian Albert Batyrov in the second.The glorious moment came after Sushil outclassed Kazakh grappler Leonid Spiridonov of Kazakastan 2-1, 0-1, 1-0 to win an Olympic Bronze medal.

Sushil won two repechage rounds after he had lost his first grapple in the morning to a far superior Ukrainian Andriy Stadnik 3-8 & what makes the achievement even more significant is that Sushil fought and won all three of his bouts in less than one hour after the energy sapping hour Sushil has time to reflect on his achievement. I will continue to win medals for India.

All the fights were tiring and nerve wrecking said Sushil and the question is that what is a Repachage wrestlers who only lose against the two finalists make up a repachage. The repachage matches begin with wrestlers who lost in the 1^st round including the matches to obtain the ideal # against one of the 2 finalists up to the losers in the semi-finals by direct elimination. Winners of the 2-repachage matches each receive a bronze medal and Sushils campaign seemed nearly over when he lost his first round battle against eventual silver medallist Andriy Stadnik but repachage provided him a ray of hope and the Indian proved simply irresistible as he beat three grapplers on the trot to win the bronze and down in the dumps after his opening round defeat Sushil came up with an incredible show beating Doug Schwab USA Albert Batyrov Belarus and finally the losing semifinalist Leonid Spiridonov Kazakhstan in the repachage rounds to earn his slice of history. Sushil thus became the second Indian wrestler after K D Jadhav who won a bronze in the 1952 Helsinki Games to win an Olympic medal. Incidentally in the 2006 Doha Asian Games also Sushil had beaten Leonid to win the bronze against Leonid Sushil grabbed early initiative by scoring two technical points that proved decisive in the end though the Kazakh grappler scored one in the second period and managed to thwart Sushil the Indian proved his superiority again in the third period and eventually prevailed 3-2 to trigger frenzied celebration among the Indians present at the Chinese Agricultural University here.

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