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Georgia's Khinchegashvili, Iranian Yazdanicharati win Rio Olympic wrestling titles (updated)

Xinhua, August 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

Vladimer Khinchegashvili turned his London Olympics silver medal into a gold one as he won the men's freestyle 57kg title at the Rio Games on Friday when Iranian Hassan Aliazam Yazdanicharati won a bloody men's 74kg final.

Khinchegashvili came back from behind to beat Japanese Rei Higuchi 4-3 in the final.

Higuchi led 3-0 in the second period, but 2015 world champion Khinchegashvili battled back to make the score 3-3 and give him the lead on criteria. A late unsuccessful challenge gave the Georgian a 4-3 win.

Iranian Hassan Rahimi, a 2013 world champion, claimed his fourth straight world-level medal after earning a fall over Yowlys Bonne of Cuba and two-time world champion Haji Aliyev of Azerbaijan outpowered two-time world medalist Vladimir Vladimirov Dubov from Bulgaria to take the other bronze medal.

In the 74kg final that saw several medical timeouts, Yazdanicharati came back from behind to beat Russian Aniuar Geduev 6-6.

World bronze medalist Geduev dominated the first period to take a 6-0 lead into the break as he fought both his opponent and a badly bleeding forehead injury. The 21-year-old Iranian came through with three takedowns in the final period -- with the final one coming with eight seconds on the clock -- to win the match in dramatic fashion.

"I thank God for being here. It was really hard. I had to pass a lot of hurdles to be here. I just can thank God for what I've achieved," said Yazdanicharati.

Yazdanicharati admitted that Geduev's chance to win was dented by his injury.

"I already knew that with the injury he couldn't pull off the (same moves). So I had a plan. I wanted to make him tired and suck his energy out to be able to win it in the last minute. Also, the referee actually was not as good as he is supposed to be," he said.

Turkey's European champion Soner Demirtas blanked Galymzhan Usserbayev from Kazakhstan 6-0 in the bronze-medal match to earn his first world-level medal while Azerbaijan's Jabrayil Hasanov rebounded from his semifinal loss, beating Bekzod Abdurakhmanov of Uzbekistan 9-7 for the other bronze. Endit