Manika Batra continues on her history-making journey

Competing at the Montpellier leg, the three-time Olympian beat the World No. 14 Bernadette Szocs of Romania 3-1 (11-9, 6-11, 13-11, 11-9) to make it to the last eight. The WTT Champions is the premier series TT event that sees the top 32 paddlers competing for honours throughout the season. The five-leg event was rolled out two years ago.

In Montpellier, Batra began with a convincing 3-0 (11-4, 11-8, 12-10) win over USA’s Lily Zhang before getting past Szocs in the Last 16. Incidentally, Batra also beat Szocs in India's 3-2 win over Romania in the women’s team event at the Paris 2024 Olympics a few months back.
However, that was the furthest the Reliance Foundation athlete could go at the WTT Champions event, losing to the former world junior champion, Qian Tianyi of China 0-3 (8-11, 8-11, 10-12).
Manika will be seen in action at the season’s final WTT Champions event in Frankfurt, Germany next week.

Vicky Hooda bags bronze at the U23 Wrestling Worlds

Meanwhile, one of our young wrestlers Vicky Hooda too made headlines with an impressive performance at the U23 World Wrestling Championships 2024. Competing in the 97kg freestyle category, Hooda clinched a bronze medal to become the first Indian to win a medal in a heavyweight division at the U23 Worlds.

The 21-year-old enjoyed a fine run at the event. He began by pinning Georgia’s Merab Suleimanishvili in his opening round and followed it up with a controlled 5-0 win over Radu Lefter of Moldova. Though Hooda lost to Iran’s Mahdi Moharamali Hajiloueian Morafah in the semi-final bout, he didn’t let the loss bother him much and bounced back soon to register a 7-2 win over Ivan Prymachenko of Ukraine to seal his bronze.