There is never a dearth of drama in Indian wrestling. After exempting four wrestlers, the men’s selection trials in both Freestyle and Greco-Roman categories on Saturday saw some surprise winners but it was the closely-contested 57kg category that remained the highlight.
While CWG winner Rahul Aware did not participate in the trials at the SAI Training Centre in Sonepat — there were murmurs of him not making the weight — the three-way tie between Sandeep Tomar, Utkarh Kale and Ravi Kumar ended in a stalemate with all three winning a bout each in the second round. While Tomar, who represented India at the Rio Olympics was initially announced as the winner by virtue of winning the final bout, the decision was quickly rescinded. A re-trial between the three is now scheduled for June 13.
Ravi Kumar won the first bout 4-2 against Tomar but then lost to Kale 6-4. It all came down to the bout between Tomar and Kale and even though the latter looked set to take the spot with a 6-2 lead at break, Tomar came back with a massive four-point throw to lead in the last few seconds. Kale challenged the decision but it held and Tomar won 12-8.
While technically the decision should have been on the basis of classification points in case of a tie, in this case both Kale and Tomar had 14 points. The WFI has now rescheduled the trial in the 57kg along with the trials for the Asian Junior Championships on Wednesday.
In the 97 kg, Mausam Khatri came back from being 2-0 down against Satyavrat Kadian to level 2-2 and take the bout and the spot for the Asiad. Bajrang Punia (65kg) and Sushil Kumar (74kg) had been allowed to skip the trials by the federation and are currently training in Georgia. While those winning the selection trials in the four categories here would participate in both the Asian Games and the World Championships in October, WFI is likely to conduct fresh trials in the two exempted categories for the Budapest event.
Women’s trials would be held in Lucknow on Sunday.
The squads: Freestyle: Bajrang Punia (65kg), Sushil Kumar (74kg), Pawan Kumar (86kg), Mausam Khatri (97kg), Sumit (125kg); Greco-Roman: Gyanendra (60kg), Manish (67 kg), Gurpreet Singh (77 kg), Harpreet Singh (87 kg), Hardeep (97 kg), Naveen (125 kg).