Olympian Antim Panghal and Harshita won gold medals at the Polyak Imre & Varga Janos Memorial 2025 wrestling tournament in Budapest after winning their respective weight classes in Hungary.
India’s women wrestlers picked up four medals – two gold, a silver and a bronze on Friday.
Antim Panghal beat Natalia Malysheva 7-4 in the final for her second international gold this year following her triumph at the Ulaanbaatar Open in May.
In a rematch from the Paris 2024 Olympics, Antim Panghal opened her campaign with a dominant 10-0 win over Zeynep Yetgil of Turkiye. In Paris last year, the Indian wrestler lost to the Turkish grappler with the same scoreline in their opening bout.
Antim, a two-time junior world wrestling champion, then produced another commanding performance in the semi-finals with a 10-0 win against America’s Felicity Kay Taylor to make the gold medal bout.
Harshita won India’s second gold medal of the day in the 72kg category after competing in the Nordic system and beating four-time Asian champion Zhamila Bakbergenova of Kazakhstan in the final round.
Harshita had beaten France’s Pauline Lecarpentier via disqualification and Kseniia Burakova via fall in the previous rounds.
Neha Sangwan, meanwhile, had to settle for silver in the 57kg after a 4-0 loss via pinfall in the final against former Olympic champion Helen Maroulis of USA.
The 18-year-old Neha Sangwan beat former junior world champion Nilufar Raimova of Kazakhstan 7-2 in the quarter-finals and Hungary’s Roza Szenttamasi 8-4 in the semis to make the gold medal bout.
In the women’s 50kg, Neelam won bronze after beating Kseniya Stankevich in the final. The Indian beat Canada’s Madison Parks 10-8 in qualification but was dominated 10-0 by Elizaveta Smirnova in the quarter-finals.
Neelam earned a shot at the bronze through the repechage round, where she beat Nadezhda Sokolova 18-7.
Meanwhile, Jaideep failed to make it past the quarter-finals in the men’s 74kg category. He beat Georgia’s Giorgi Elbakidze 5-2 in the pre-quarterfinals before narrowly losing 6-5 to Magomedrasul Asluev of Bahrain.
Friday’s medal haul takes India’s overall tally at the Budapest meet to six. India won two medals on the opening day of the tournament with Sujeet Kalkal winning gold in the 65kg men’s freestyle, while Rahul bagged bronze in the 57kg category.
The Polyak Imre & Varga Janos Memorial in Budapest is the fourth and final wrestling ranking series of the year.
The ranking points on offer will help wrestlers earn better seeding for the World Wrestling Championships, which will be held in Zagreb, Croatia in September.
India have fielded wrestlers across men’s and women’s freestyle, as well as the Greco-Roman, in the ongoing Budapest meet, which concludes on July 20.