Japan’s Yui Susaki won gold at the ongoing U23 World Wrestling Championships in Pontevedra, Spain, a month after winning her third senior world title. And wrestling for just four minutes and 47 seconds in four bouts, Susaki completed wrestling ‘Grand Slam’ – winning all world titles and the Olympics, the first wrestler to achieve the feat.
“I wanted to take the U23 title and become the first to achieve the ‘grand slam’,” Susaki said. “I’m so happy I was able to achieve it.”
Well aware that this year is the last chance for her to compete at the U23 level, Olympic champion Susaki entered the competition with no concerns and came out with another record to her name.
“I always knew about [the Grand Slam]. There were two of my predecessors who won four [age-group] titles,” Susaki said referring to Haruna OKUNO (JPN) and Masako FURUICHI (JPN) “but no one in the wrestling world had added the fifth title of the Olympics [which Susaki won in 2021]. I wanted to make history, so I was definitely going to enter this year. I knew this would be the first and last time [at U23].”
In the 50kg final, Susaki wrestled Ankush PANGHAL (IND) and went for the double-leg. Panghal put up a fight for a brief time and even tried getting exposure to score points on Susaki, something which has not happened for three years.
Susaki improvised quickly and locked Panghal’s leg in Figure 4 and secured the fall in a minute and 52 seconds to create history.
Source and image: www.uww.org
