Repechage

Repechage is practice of giving more opportunities to players who are capable but lost early because of unlucky draw in single elimination game tournaments.  It addresses the situation where the top players meet in a blood round, also known as early elimination round or knockout round. Such unlucky draw will matter less in round robin game tournaments. The word is derived from french word repecher that means

In martial arts tournaments of Judo, Karate and wrestling, single elimination events will determine the top two players. All the losers to a topper in the first, second, third and quarter final elimination rounds in a group will enter repechage. The first round loser will compete with second round loser to decide the one who will compete with next round loser and so on. The two winners from each group will be given the third position. Indian wrestler Sakshi Malik won the medal in repechage round.

Other games have different methods like limiting only to quarter final losers instead of to all rounds. Some games extend it to even semifinalists and not just finalists and a semifinal loser will play with winner from other group to avoid repeated play with same semifinalist.

References

• Repechage
• Wrestling tournament structure
• Wrestling repechage rule
• Olympics 2016 women's freestyle 58kg schedule