Olympic medallist Bajrang Punia and World Championship medallist Vinesh Phogat have been given a direct entry into India’s Asian Video games wrestling squad.
In response to PTI, the Wrestling Federation of India’s ad-hoc committee issued a round stating that it had chosen wrestlers within the males’s freestyle 65kg and ladies’s 53kg however trials will likely be held in all six weight classes in males’s freestyle, males’s Greco-Roman and ladies’s freestyle occasions.
Although the round doesn’t identify Punia or Phogat, panel member Ashoke Garg informed PTI that the duo have been exempted from trials. The Greco-Roman and ladies’s trials will likely be held on July 22 with the lads’s trials scheduled for July 23 at Delhi Indira Gandhi stadium.
Punia and Phogat are skilled wrestlers who’ve received quite a few medals of their respective classes through the years. Nevertheless, neither wrestler has competed in any worldwide occasion this yr attributable to their protest towards WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
Whereas Punia and Phogat had been granted exemptions, the 4 different protesting wrestlers — Sakshi Malik, her husband Satyawart Kadiyan, Jitender Kinha and Bajrang’s spouse Sangeeta Phogat haven’t been given exemptions.
The WFI’s pointers states that whereas choice trials are necessary, athletes who’ve received medals in World Championships and Olympics may be chosen with out trials ought to the chief coach advocate it.
Nevertheless, based on PTI, males’s free-style nationwide coach Jagmander Singh and ladies’s nationwide coach Virender Dahiya weren’t consulted by the ad-hoc panel.
“I’m not even conscious that such a call has been taken. The ad-hoc panel had stopped calling us for conferences. We have now not made any such suggestion, we favoured trials in all classes,” Jagmander informed PTI.
Dahiya mentioned, “We don’t know in what form Bajrang and Vinesh are in. They haven’t competed within the final eight months. You get to find out about pace, energy, weight, solely throughout the competitions. And so they haven’t competed after CWG and World Championship final yr, so we have no idea how good they’re at this second.”
Sujeet Kalkal has impressed within the males’s 65kg class successful bronze within the U-20 World Championships final yr. He additionally received gold within the Tunisia Rating Sequence, 2022 Beneath 23 and Beneath 20 Asian Championships.
Talking to Mirror Now, Antim Panghal criticised the ad-hoc panel’s determination and mentioned that she would discover difficult the choice legally. In Vinesh’s 53kg class, Panghal has put spectacular performances. She grew to become the primary lady to assert a gold medal on the Beneath 20 World Championships final yr. She adopted up that feat by successful silver on the Asian Championships in April this yr.
The Olympic Council of Asia had set July 15 as a deadline for nationwide Olympic our bodies to ship their squads for the Asian Video games. Nevertheless, the OCA had granted IOA a one-week extension to submit the wrestling squad below “distinctive circumstances”.
The protesting wrestlers had requested for the trials to be held in August to permit them time to arrange for it. Nevertheless, the OCA shot down IOA’s request for an additional extension of the deadline.