Wrestler Ritu Phogat excluded from Olympic TOPS programme

The Sports Authority of India (SAI) has taken the decision to axe Ritu from the TOPS programme after the young wrestler made herself unavailable for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Ritu, who has a gold medal in Commonwealth Wrestling besides a bronze in Asian Championships, has opted to try her luck in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) for which she will travel to Singapore.

"Wrestler Ritu Phogat who had earlier been inducted into the TOPS scheme, has been excluded from the scheme since she will not be participating in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, on account of her shifting to Singapore to train for Mixed Martial Arts," the SAI said in a statement on Tuesday.

The above decision was taken at the recent meeting of SAI which was also attended by Director General Neelam Kapur and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) President Narinder Batra. Another significant decision taken by SAI's Mission Olympic Cell was the selection of five para-badminton players to be included in the TOPS for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games.

Manoj Sarkar and Pramod Bhagat (Men's Singles-SL3), Sukant Kadam, Tarun and Suhas Yathiraj (Men's Singles-SL4) were the five strongest men's singles para shuttlers who were identified for the programme while Parul Parmar and Manasi Joshi are the two female para shuttlers to be added on the watchlist.