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Rio Olympics 2016: Indian wrestlers to compete across all three formats for the first time

Vinesh Phogat was the first woman wrestler to make the cut for Rio 2016

These are glorious days for Indian wrestling – an unprecedented total of eight wrestlers from the country are set to chase gold across all three formats of the sport in this year’s Summer Olympics. With a contingent that includes three women at this stage for the first time ever, Indian wrestlers have succeeded in making the cut for Rio 2016 in each category – Men’s Freestyle, Men’s Greco-Roman and Women’s wrestling.

For India, it was freestyler Narsingh Yadav who initiated this chapter by winning a bronze at the 2015 World Championships held in Las Vegas, United States in September last year. Recently, however, the burning question that’s rocked the nation is whether to send the man himself to represent India in Rio, or the veteran Sushil Kumar who belongs to the same 74kg category. If latest signs are to be believed, the two-time Olympic medallist looks certain to miss out on a berth as Narsingh rightfully prepares for takeoff.

Next, it was London 2012 bronze winner Yogeshwar Dutt’s triumph in the 65kg category under Men’s freestyle, followed by 25-year-old Hardeep Singh’s progress to the final of Men’s Greco-Roman 98kg category at the 2016 Asian Qualification Tournament in March this year that fetched India the two respective Rio quotas.

On 24th April, Sandeep Tomar clinched the fourth place for India after winning the 57kg freestyle play-off bout at the first World Qualification Tournament held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

With one last shot at qualification up for grabs, the Indian women announced their arrival to the occasion in stupendous fashion. As the final World meet in Istanbul got underway, some delightful news regarding Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik surging through the ranks at the Turkish capital started pouring in.

Also read: Narsingh Yadav doesn't want a 'fair' trial with Sushil Kumar and his reasoning makes complete sense

After crashing out from the first qualifiers in Astana and subsequently disqualified from the second in Mongolia for being overweight, 21-year-old Vinesh fought back valiantly to take Istanbul by storm as she captured the gold medal in Women’s 48kg category, whereas her compatriot Sakshi Malik took silver in the 58kg section to seal the 5th and 6th Olympic places for Indian wrestling.

Finally, it was a deplorable doping scandal coming to the forefront yesterday that saw several athletes penalized by the UWW for violations recorded during the qualifiers, thereby forfeiting Olympic places to their ‘clean’ rivals. As a result, Ravinder Khatri in Men’s 85kg Greco-Roman and Babita Kumari in Women’s 53kg wrestling received the final two tickets to Rio, thus taking the Indian wrestlers’ count to an excellent eight this year.

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