The Great Revival in Wrestling

Wrestling as a sport is extremely popular in certain pockets of India and that has kept the sport going. Wrestling also has the unique distinction of being one of the few sports where we have medalled at every kind of event in the world. We have won medals at the World championship, the Olympics and every other competition of note.

After a history of moderate success, there was a huge drop in our performance level in the early 90’s and it started what is easily the worst period for Indian wrestling. During this time we fared really badly in international meets and it seemed as if the sport was dying in India. We didn’t win a single medal at the Hiroshima and Bangkok Asian games in 1994 and 1998 respectively. Prior to this we had won at least a couple of medals in each of the Asian games. Then we won just a single medal at Busan in 2002.

The performance at the Olympics also declined. We failed to place a single wrestler in the top six after Barcelona in 1992. Even the junior wrestlers showed a downward trend in their performance.

Then at the start of the new millennium, just when all had seemed lost, there emerged a fine crop of junior wrestlers to give new hope to the sport in India. They won a bagful of medals at junior international meets including 4 at the World championships. While success at junior level doesn’t always translate into success at senior level, there was at least a glimmer of hope.

This glimmer then became brighter. One of the juniors, Palwinder Cheema ended India’s drought at the Asian Games in 2002 with a bronze medal. And two others did well at the World Championships – Mukesh Khatri finished 5th in 2001 and Sushil Kumar placed 4th in 2003 – these two were India’s best performances at the World Championships since 1970.

And then in 2006 there was more joy. We won 4 medals at the Doha Asian Games – our best performance since Seoul 1986. The ‘average’ old days were back.

The days became great, when Sushil Kumar won the bronze at the 2008 Olympics with a sensational performance in the repechage round. This was as good as it had ever got for Indian wrestling – matching the medals won by K Jadhav at the 1952 Olympics and Bishwambher Singh and Uday Chand at the World Championships in the 1960’s.

Indian Wrestling was well and truly back to its best.