Wrestler Antim Panghal to knock court's door after Vinesh Gets direct entry to Asian Games
After the WFI ad hoc tribunal decided that Olympic medalist Bajrang Punia and World Championship medalist Vinesh Phogat will receive direct admission into the Asian Games, wrestler Antim Panghal requested a fair selection trial. The decision by the ad-hoc panel has left many miffed.
Meanwhile, Panghal is no rookie, and is India's first woman U-20 champion, and won a silver medal at the Asian Championship this year. The youngster told Mirror Now, adding, “I have no problem with the trials but won’t let anyone get the direct entry, it’s not fair."
She went on to say that she will participate in the selection trials. As per the rules and regulations of the WFI, any athlete, irrespective of their past laurels has to go through the selection trials, which the likes of Punia and Phogat had opposed. The only exception to this is when the selection committee takes a decision to field the candidate directly on the recommendation of the national or foreign coach.
In this case, neither of the requirements were met, and national coaches for men's freestyle Jagmander Singh and women's freestyle coach Virender Dahiya, were not consulted. Dahiya said," We don’t know in what shape Bajrang and Vinesh are. They have not competed in the last eight months. You get to know about speed, strength, weight, only during the competitions. And they have not competed after CWG and World Championship last year, so we do not know how good they are at this moment."
“I am not even aware that such a decision has been taken. The ad-hoc panel had stopped calling us for meetings. We have not made any such recommendation, we favoured trials in all categories," Jagmander told PTI.
“And in both 53kg and 65kg categories, there are solid youngsters who can compete well. Their strength is good. The ad-hoc panel has overruled us in making this decision," he alleged.