Amid that wreck, which saw sitting protests by big names like Bajrang Punia, Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik turn into furore, planning for the Olympics took a backseat.The eventual result was only six wrestlers making it to the Paris Games — five women and just one for the men’s competition.
Credit to Vinesh that she could stay in the zone despite being one of the central and most vocal figures in the wrestling protests. She is among the five women wrestlers in the Indian contingent, but will compete in the 50kg. The WFI decided that the 53kg quota won by Antim Panghal will stay with her. Vinesh won the 50kg quota at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers and will compete in the same category at her third Olympics — the first Indian woman wrestler to achieve the feat.
The last time Vinesh wrestled in the 50kg event was in the year 2018.
Besides Vinesh and Antim, the three other women competing in Paris will be Anshu Malik (57kg), Nisha (68kg) and Reetika Hooda (76kg)
The lone male Indian wrestler who qualified for the Paris Games is Aman Sehrawat (57kg).
“Aman, Vinesh and Antim, only if she is fit.” Those were the picks of former India wrestler Sujeet Maan, who has been part of the Indian coaching set up and also trained Bajrang in the recent past, including at the Tokyo Olympics.
ANTIM PANGHAL (women’s freestyle 53kg)
Antim hasn’t competed since her bronze medal finish at the 2023 World Championships. But it earned her the No. 4 seeding for the Paris Olympics, which puts her in the top half and allows a relatively clear look at the medal rounds without facing world champion Akari Fujinami of Japan and Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Qianyu Pang of China.
But in Antim’s path will be fellow World Championships 2023 bronze medallist Lucia Yepez of Ecuador and the three-time bronze medallist at Worlds, Maria Prevolaraki of Greece.
Maan adds an interesting scenario that needs to be included in the equation to evaluate India’s medal chances.
“Russia is not there, first of all. Ravi (Dahiya) won the silver medal in Tokyo and lost the final against a Russian wrestler (Zaur Uguev),” he said to explain Russia’s historic dominance on the mat.
Russia has won the most gold medals (62) at the Olympics in wrestling.
On that note, the women’s 53kg category, in which Antim will compete, won’t see Natalia Malysheva of Russia and Vanesa Kaladzinskaya of Belarus competing.
Antim defeated Natalia at the 2023 World Championships and lost to Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist Vanesa in the semifinals of the same event.
Belarusian athletes have also been barred from the Paris Games because their country decided to be Russia’s ally in the war against Ukraine.
AMAN SEHRAWAT (men’s freestyle 57kg)
Aman is seeded sixth at Paris 2024 Olympics and will be slotted in the bottom half of the draw, alongside Japan’s Rei Higuchi and Armenia’s Arsen Harutyunyan — the three-times World Championships bronze medallist. It puts Aman on collision course with Harutyunyan in the quarters and Higuchi in the semis.
Higuchi, the silver medallist from the Rio 2016 Olympics, had defeated Aman in the final of the Hungary Ranking Series in June.
“If you see, last month at the ranking series in Budapest, Aman lost to Higuchi in the final 1-11, and the Japanese is in his half of the draw,” Maan said as a note of caution for Aman.
“I saw that bout. Higuchi never gave Aman a chance, nazdeek bhi nahi lagne diya (he didn’t let Aman come even close to him)…Among all the countries, Japan does the most homework on each of their possible opponents. So they must have worked out Aman as well.”
Aman has the big shoes of Ravi, who was his main competitor for a place on the flight to Paris, to fill.
(Coach Sujeet Maan with Aman)
According to Maan, the box that Aman will have to tick is the mental level, which kept Ravi head and shoulders above his competitors in Tokyo before he lost the final.
“Aman is young, he is just 21. A lot will depend on his mind and what strategy the coaches around him make,” said Maan, who has seen Aman from up close at national camps as he grew up to become Ravi’s challenger.
Aman is known to have the capacity to fight the entire six minutes of a bout at the same energy level, but Maan says that’s not what wins Olympic and World Championship medals. He must avoid losing points early in his bouts.
“He has energy in abundance,” said Maan. “At this level, if you concede early points, then it becomes difficult to recover in six minutes. If I can say, at the mental level Aman is behind Ravi. He doesn’t work on his opponents, their strengths and weaknesses…He doesn’t have that level of defence or attack at the moment.”
“One Iranian coach had once told me about Aman that if he makes good use of his mind, he can win an Olympic medal. But if he makes the same mistakes like he did against Higuchi in Budapest (Ranking Series), then we can’t say,” he added.
VINESH PHOGAT (women’s freestyle 50kg)
Vinesh, along with Anshu, Nisha and Reetika, will go into the competition unseeded — which leaves the quartet waiting to know their rivals in respective rounds, unlike Aman and Antim who can look at the draw and calculate their likely rival in a particular round.
Being unseeded puts wrestlers in the path of Olympic and World Championships medallists, making their progression much tougher.
Vinesh, thus, will need to be at her best mentally, put the disturbing memories of her tussle with WFI behind, and believe that a change in weight category isn’t going to put her off.
But Maan says it’s easier said than done.
After sleeping for nights on the sidewalks during wrestling protests, facing threats of a life ban, a knee injury, surgery and eventually a shift in weight category from 53kg to 50kg, Vinesh has seen it all in her otherwise decorated career. Not to forget how she defeated a career-threatening injury that cut short her Rio Olympics campaign.
(PTI photo)
But still the demons Vinesh has fought of late will take some effort to be kept away from haunting her in Paris if she were to add to her World Championships, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games medals.
“Talking about Vinesh, it’s her third Olympics. And I will talk about her mind again…If she can stay focused on the competition, then she is very close to a medal. It will also depend a lot on how she manages her weight,” opined Maan.
Vinesh has admitted that because her muscle mass is very high, she gains weight easily. So to stay under 50kg at the Games is going to be another challenge that she will have to overcome both mentally and physically.
Who else among the six wrestlers can be among medal contention?
Answering that question, Maan said Reetika can turn out to be the darkhorse in the women’s 76kg category.
“If you want to add another one (medal contender), it can be Reetika Hooda. She is a new girl and can beat anyone on her day because she is an unknown commodity, plus there is less competition in the 76kg category.”
The wrestling competition at the Paris Olympics begins on August 5.
