‘s could not have given a better gift to India on Rakshbandhan. The 23 year old won a bronze medal in the 58kg category after the Indian beat Aisuluu Tynybekova 8-5 in the bronze medal bout. In a thrilling contest, Sakshi fought back from 0-5 down to seal the bout 8-5 in her favour. With seconds left on the clock, she produced a three-point move to seal the bout and India’s first medal at Rio 2016 .

It was again a tough match as Sakshi conceded a five-point lead early in the contest, and like in three out of the four bouts earlier in the day, she was back from behind to produce the moves when they mattered, and seal the win.

Tynybekova started on a positive note as her leg-grab put her in the lead. She repeated the move again and sat in a comfortable position. Malik opened the scoring in t he second period of the bout when she pushed her opponent down and out of the mat. She hit back with a similar move to reduce the deficit to just one point.

With scores locked at 5-5, and only seconds to go, Malik managed to steal three points and erupted in joy after a review from the Tynybekova corner didn’t make any difference to the scoring.

Earlier, Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi’s wrestling peer in the 48-kg category, was forced to retire hurt early into her bout after a promising display against a Chinese woman, earlier on Wednesday.

Earlier, Malik reached the Repechage rounds of the women’s freestyle 58kg event and made most of the second life as she outplayed Mongolian wrestler Orkhon in the Rd 2 contest 12-3 to advance to the bronze-medal match.

In the quarterfinal, Malik lost to a much quicker Koblova of Russia to lose 9-2 and crashed out of contention for a gold or a silver medal.