Road to Rio - Who among the Indian wrestlers will make it to the Olympics?

It’s the Olympic year and, as usual, Indian sports fans will be looking forward to this quadrennial extravaganza with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Not much has changed since London 2012, with a nation of a billion plus still nursing expectations only from a handful of games namely Badminton, Boxing, Shooting and of course Wrestling.

Wrestling won India a bronze through Sushil Kumar at Beijing in 2008, as well as a silver and a bronze in the 2012 London games from Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt respectively.

Yogeshwar is not far behind, he is the reigning Asian and Commonwealth Champion along with the spectacular bronze that he won in London simply decimating his North Korean opponent with his famous leg lace called the ‘Feetla’. I for one remember his swollen right eye as much as the bronze medal hanging around his neck.

Time have passed..lots of water has flown under the bridge as they say. These 2 legends under the able tutelage of Mahabali Satpal Singh have inspired a lot of youngsters who have already created a niche for themselves in Indian wrestling history.

Another one from the same stable is the highly rated (atleast by Yogeshwar) Bajrang Punia who is the current Commonwealth and Asian Games Silver medallist, and also a bronze medallist from the 2013 World Championships. He somehow narrowly missed out on another bronze at the Las Vegas worlds last year.

That brings us to the current flagbearer of Indian wrestling today, the extremely powerful Narsingh Pancham Yadav.

Other names hogging the limelight in the wrestling arena from India are Sandeep Tomar who recently won the Asian Championships, Rahul Aware, Satyawrat Kadian, Pawan Kumar and the experienced Mausam Khatri just to name a few.

But how rosy are India’s prospects at the Olympics? Satpalji opines that India could clinch medals in the lower 3 Freestyle categories (57, 65 & 74 kg).

Rahul Aware the 2nd in line was impressive in the Pro-Wrestling League in January earlier this year losing only 1 bout and that too to the Georgian world champion Khinchegashvili.

He fought in the 61kg category at the Bangkok Asian Championships last week but looked just too slow against top class opponents from Iran and Japan. He lost by fall in both the bouts. Worrisome to say the least.

At the moment he looks the best of the 3 to represent India at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers at Astana.

Moving up a category to 65 kg the scenario is more interesting. Yogeshwar is not short on skills and experience but he is 33. The knees keep troubling him despite the best of treatment and his withdrawal from the Las Vegas Worlds jolted the Indian squad. He was nowhere near his best at the Pro-Wrestling League and he barely fought in the latter stages of the tournament.

These two may compete against Rajneesh and Amit Dhankar in the trials for Olympic qualifiers and based on physical fitness, safe money would be on Dhankar atleast going by the Pro-Wrestling League performances.

But somehow there is an impression that selection in this category may not be very genuine. Yogeshwar is very vocal in his support of Bajrang whereas Dhankar has had some strained relations with the Federation and Yogeshwar. In 2014 Dhankar had moved the court for conducting trials before the Glasgow Games.

The 74 kg category is where Narsingh Yadav has secured India’s Olympic qualification. All in all it would be really interesting to see who goes for the qualifiers as much as the end result.