By Ece Toksabay
CHIBA (Reuters) – Reigning world champion Tamyra Mensah-Stock stormed into the semi-finals of the women’s wrestling competition with consummate ease on Monday, winning both her matches by technical superiority on her Olympic debut without dropping a point.
The United States’ Mensah-Stock took just over two minutes to overpower 2016 Olympic champion Sara Dosho of Japan in a 10-0 shutout in her first match before turning in an equally dominant performance against China’s Feng Zhou in the quarter-final.
Dosho was dispatched in a blur of lightning quick takedowns and ankle laces that the Japanese wrestler had no answer to, leaving her shattered.
“I’m so disappointed with myself because I couldn’t deal with my opponent’s tackles many times. I’m stronger than what I used to be,” Dosho, 26, said.
“I really wanted to get the gold medal. I know she is so strong and I wanted to guard against her tackles, but I couldn’t do so.”
The 28-year-old Mensah-Stock then turned her attention to Feng, gaining a two-point advantage barely seconds into the match and followed that up with two double leg takedowns to lead 6-0 at the break.
Four more technical points followed in quick succession and Mensah-Stock earned a 10-0 victory despite Feng mounting a desperate defence, setting up a semi-final clash with Ukraine’s 2018 world champion Alla Cherkasova.
In the men’s Greco Roman welterweight category, Armenia’s Karapet Chalyan marched into the semi-finals with a 5-0 victory by points over Uzbek Jalgasbay Berdimuratov and a narrow 2-1 win over the Russian Olympic Committee’s Aleksandr Chekhirkin.
Chalyan, a bronze medallist at last year’s European Wrestling Championships, will be up against Kyrgyzstan’s former Asian champion Akzhol Makhmudov who impressed with 11-0 and 9-1 victories in his two bouts.
ROC’s Musa Evloev and Armenia’s Artur Aleksanyan — two favourites for gold in the Greco Roman heavyweight category — also qualified for the semi-finals.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay in Chiba, Writing by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
