Geeta Phogat - Jat Set Go!

Today, the 9th of August 2012, is a landmark day for Indian sports, because the country is going to witness its first-ever woman wrestler to qualify for the Olympics – Geeta Phogat – in action. She will go up against 34-year-old Tonya Verbeek of Canada, who was the silver medalist at Athens in 2004 and the bronze medalist at Beijing in 2008.

Geeta has the distinction of being the  first Indian woman wrestler to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, which she won in 2010. She has numerous other international medals to her credit, including three consecutive medals in the Asian Cadet Championships in 2003, 2004 and 2005. But the 23-year-old Jat, who hails from Bhiwani village in Haryana, is in no mood to celebrate just yet, as she wants to completely focus on winning  a medal at the Olympics. Phogat, who plays in the 55-kg weight category, feels that the Olympics is just the beginning of her journey, and she is going to leave no stone unturned to realise her dream of winning a medal.

Coming from a family of wrestlers who initially trained in an enclosure near the cattle sheds, Geeta has undergone rigorous training at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports (NSNIS) in Patiala under the guidance of chief coach O.P. Yadav and foreign expert Ryan Dobo. Her father Mahavir Singh, who was also her first coach, is a renowned wrestler, and so are her four sisters who are also a part of the national team. Phogat considers her father and the rest of her family as her main source of motivation. Mahavir Singh was ridiculed in his village for letting his girls wrestle with the village youth. But Singh had no other option as the other girls of the village had never taken up wrestling.

The villagers might have laughed at Mahavir Singh’s decision, which was a path-breaking one considering the conservative mindset of the rural people, but the very qualification and participation of Geeta at these Olympics would have put an end to most of the chatter. This is an interesting phase in Indian sports where women like Geeta and Mary Kom have ventured into supposedly male-dominated fields. With Mary crashing out in the fighting arena after a spirited challenge, the hopes of  a gold medal from a woman now rest on the shoulders of Geeta Phogat. Sure, there may be a long way to go before she can lay her hands on the gold, and her opponent today is anything but easy. But for a girl and her family who have fought against all odds to realise their Olympic dream, it might just be a matter of time before they have the last laugh.