Wrestler Ravi Kumar claims silver at Junior Worlds

Indian grappler Ravi Kumar went down to Mahir Amiraslanov of Azerbaijan in the men's 55kg freestyle final to finish with the silver medal at the Junior World Wrestling Championship here.

Ravi, who had registered several come from behind wins in the earlier rounds, was unable to produce a similar effort against his highly rated opponent in the title clash as Amiraslanov ran away with a 10-0 win.

"It feels good to win a silver medal at the end, but that was not the goal of this tournament for me. the goal was to come out with a gold medal," Ravi was quoted as saying in a Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) statement.

"I am happy to win the silver medal, but overall I am a little disappointed to lose the final. But this is not the end, I just need to fine tune everything - more contact on my feet, pushing and pulling at my pace."

The Asian junior champion had a hard fought 12-8 victory over Stevan Micic of USA in his opening bout. Ravi, who was trailing 2-8 against Micic at the break, took 10 points in the second period to make a brilliant comeback.

In the quarterfinal, he overcame Canadian Samuel Jagas 9-5.

Ravi was trailing 0-8 after the first period of his last four clash against Zanabazar Zandanbud of Mongolia. But the Indian had produced another superb comeback to claim a 9-8 verdict.