Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik lead India’s hopes at World Wrestling Championship

Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik and Asian Games’ gold medal winner Bajrang Punia have been named in the 30-member Indian contingent that will participate at the 2018 World Wrestling Championship to be held in Budapest, Hungary from October 20 to 28.

10 members from each of the three categories (Freestyle, Greco-Roman and the women’s categories) has been selected by the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), reported news agency IANS on Tuesday.

While Bajrang (65kg) and Sandeep Tomar (57kg) will lead India’s attack in the freestyle category, Sakshi (62kg), Pooja Dhanda (57kg) and Ritu Phogat (50kg) will spearhead the women’s squad in their respective categories.

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All of the above-mentioned names are touted to be strong contenders at the wrestling championship. Earlier, Vinesh Phogat, who became the first Indian woman to win a wrestling gold at the Asian Games, was ruled out at the trials for the final squad selection due to an elbow injury.

The full-squad has already reached Hungary a week back and have pursued full training for the competition, while four men wrestlers Bajrang, Kuldeep Malik (72kg), Gurpreet Singh (77kg) and Harpreet Singh (87kg) reached almost three weeks before the entire squad arrived and started training.

Bajrang is also the only Indian wrestler from the 30-member contingent to be seeded at the tournament. He is seeded third in the freestyle category behind Turkey’s Selahattin Kilicsallayan (top seed) and Russian Ilias Bekbulatov (second seed).

The Full squad:

Freestyle: Sandeep Tomar (57kg), Sonba Tanaji Gongane (61kg), Bajrang Punia (65kg), Pankaj Rana (70kg), Jitender (74kg), Sachin Rathi (79kg), Pawan Kumar (86kg), Deepak (92kg) Mausam Khatri (97kg), Sumit (125kg), Jagminder Singh (chief coach).

Women: Ritu Phogat (50kg), Pinki (53kg), Seema (55kg), Pooja Dhanda (57kg), Sangeeta (59kg), Sakshi Malik (62kg), Ritu (65kg), Navjot Kaur (68kg), Rajini (72kg), Kiran (76kg), Kuldeep Malik (chief coach).

Greco Roman: Vijay (55kg), Gyanender (60kg), Gaurav Sharma (63kg), Manish (67kg), Kuldeep Malik (72kg), Gurpreet Singh (77kg), Manjeet (82kg), Harpreet Singh (87kg), Hardeep (97kg), Naveen (130kg), Kuldeep Singh (chief coach).

Squad source: Indo-Asian News Service