Indian grapplers Ram Vir (84kg) and Pradeep Kumar (66kg) cut a sorry figure as both lost their respective bronze medal play-offs in the freestyle wrestling competition to round off another disappointing day at the Asian Games in Guangzhou on Wednesday.
Ram Vir, who straight away got an entry into the bronze medal play-off round after losing his semi-final bout, was hardly any match to his opponent -- Mongolia's Usukhbaatar Purvee as he went down 1-3 in 18 minutes 25 seconds.
Pradeep Kumar, meanwhile, won his repechage round 1 bout against Kyrgyzstan's Azat Donbaev to set up a fight with Song Chun Yang of North Korea in the bronze medal bout but failed to sustain and got thrashed by an identical margin.
Already out of the race for gold and silver, Ram Vir and Pradeep stood only a chance of bagging bronze medals for the country, while it was curtains for Commonwealth Games gold medallist Narsingh Pancham Yadav, who crashed out in the quarterfinals of the 74kg category at the Huagong Gymnasium.
Ram Vir was the lone grappler among the trio to reach the semi-finals, where he lost 1-3 to Jaesung Lee of South Korea after winning his quarter-final bout comfortably 5-0 against Aibek Usupov of Kyrgyzstan.
Pradeep lost out in the quarter-finals 0-3 to Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu of Japan but got another opportunity to contest in the repechage round after Yonemitsu made it to the final in the 66kg category.
He had earlier outplayed Yemen's Mustafa Alhaimi 5-0 in his opening bout of the day.
But, even as luck favoured Ram Vir and Pradeep, it was disappointment for Narsingh who lost 1-3 to Gombodorj Dorjvaanchig of Mongolia in the quarter-finals of the 74kg men's freestyle wrestling.
Narsingh also didn't get a chance to compete in the repechage round as Gombodorj failed to reach the final of the event.
Narsingh had earlier got the better of Husham Althaalebi of Iraq 3-1 at the start of the day to enter the last eight stage.
