Ashwini Kumar, a small-time farmer from Haryana\u2019s Dabarpur village, was at a relative\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At that moment, he decided to make one of his two sons a wrestler. \u201cIt was impossible that both of us would get into the sport. It\u2019s 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,\u201d says Sumit Kumar, Ashwini\u2019s elder son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunil, 20, wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s gold and the one before that, not much has changed in terms of India\u2019s outlook towards this style. \u201cDuring our time, Greco-Roman wrestlers were considered outcasts; failures in freestyle,\u201d Yadav, who watched Sunil\u2019s bouts from the stands at Delhi\u2019s KD Jadhav Stadium, says. \u201cThat mindset hasn\u2019t changed till today.\u201d
\nSunil Kumar\u2019s podium finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Haryana\u2019s 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\u2019t intricate enough compared to freestyle while the majority doesn\u2019t care because of India\u2019s pitiful international record. And since dangals, a major source of income for wrestlers, have just freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman never became popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost every Indian wrestler begins with freestyle as the first choice, and Sunil was no exception. After winning the \u2018selection trial\u2019 his father held, he began freestyle training at a sports school in Haryana\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ashwini Kumar, a small-time farmer from Haryana\u2019s Dabarpur village, was at a relative\u2019s 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80296,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80294\/revisions\/80296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}