Ashwini Kumar, a small-time farmer from Haryana’s Dabarpur village, was at a relative’s reception when he first came across wrestlers. Dabarpur, they say, had no wrestlers or even culture for the sport in a radius of 30-40km. It was at the function that Ashwini witnessed first-hand the aura wrestlers have and the respect they command, especially in Haryana.

At that moment, he decided to make one of his two sons a wrestler. “It was impossible that both of us would get into the sport. It’s expensive enough to take care of the dietary requirements of just one wrestler. For us, it was unaffordable to have two wrestlers in the family,” says Sumit Kumar, Ashwini’s elder son.

Sunil, 20, wasn’t even born when India last won an Asian gold medal in Greco-Roman in 1993, when Pappu Yadav won the 48kg class. But in all these years between Tuesday’s gold and the one before that, not much has changed in terms of India’s outlook towards this style. “During our time, Greco-Roman wrestlers were considered outcasts; failures in freestyle,” Yadav, who watched Sunil’s bouts from the stands at Delhi’s KD Jadhav Stadium, says. “That mindset hasn’t changed till today.”
Sunil Kumar’s podium finish.

In Haryana’s endless swathes of mud pits and cushioned mats, Greco-Roman is not a priority. For some, the style in which holds below waists are not permitted isn’t intricate enough compared to freestyle while the majority doesn’t care because of India’s pitiful international record. And since dangals, a major source of income for wrestlers, have just freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman never became popular.

Almost every Indian wrestler begins with freestyle as the first choice, and Sunil was no exception. After winning the ‘selection trial’ his father held, he began freestyle training at a sports school in Haryana’s Jind. But soon, the coaches realised his lower body did not have the strength to withstand the strong demands of freestyle wrestling, in which nearly every move begins with a leg hold.