Yogeshwar Dut, the Indian Olympic medalist and wrestler, who had a disappoint stint at the 2016 Rio Olympics, had something to lift up his spirits when reports started making the round that his bronze medal from the London Olympics 2012 is going to get elevated to silver as the ex-silver winner Russia’s Besik Kudukhov’s sample has been found positive in a dope test.
In London, Yogeshwar had lost his 60-kg freestyle pre-quarterfinal bout to Kudukhov. When the Russian wrestler reached the final, Yogeshwar got another opportunity for a podium finish in the repechage round – he defeated Franklin Gomez of Puerto Rico, Masoud Esmaeilpour of Iran and Ri Jong-myong of North Korea to claim bronze.
On Tuesday evening the wrestler said, “Jo likha hota hai, wo hoke rehta hai (What’s written in the stars is bound to happen).” He further commented, “This is good, another victory for India.”
Yogeshwar had clarified that he didn’t receive any official confirmation on the elevation of his bronze medal to silver from 2012 London Games. He also dedicated his silver medal to the people of India through his tweet.
Yogeshwar, on Wednesday morning, said that he wanted Besik Kudukhov’s family to keep the silver medal. Besik died in a car accident back in 2013 just a year after the London Summer Games. But IOC’s re-testing of samples for dope abuse revealed that Besik had taken performance enhancing drugs during the London Games.
Yogeshwar said that sympathy towards the deceased and his family is paramount for him. Yogeshwar also acknowledged Besik as a “great” wrestler and he still respected him as a wrestler.
The standard practice, which involves re-testing of samples stored for up to 10 years to allow the use of advanced testing methods to weed out dope cheats, conducted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had paved the way for Yogeshwar to join the ranks of wrestler Sushil Kumar and shooter Vijay Kumar as silver-medallists for India.
Sourced from The Indian Express, Featured image courtesy: sports.ndtv.com
