Chhatrasal find reason to cheer after dark days
A mobile phone footage from Chhatrasal stadium sends shockwaves through the country. Sushil Kumar, the wrestling centre’s most illustrious pupil and arguably India’s greatest Olympian, is seen in a group of people assaulting a junior wrestler, Sagar Dhankad, who dies soon after. In a few days, Kumar is arrested.
For the modern-day cradle of Indian wrestling, the incident is a dark chapter in what is otherwise a glorious journey. Speculations swirl whether Chhatrasal will ever be the same again. A steady dribble of top players leaving Chhatrasal had already dented its reputation. Kumar’s arrest added another blow.
It took a little over three months and an Olympic silver medal by another Chhatrasal ward to show that the institution was far from gone. When Ravi Dahiya rose to the Tokyo Olympics podium with a silver medal in the 57kg, those watching it on TV at the facility in west Delhi must have felt a sense of pride and relief. They had found a new hero. Dahiya is the centre’s third Olympic medallist (Yogeshwar Dutt had won bronze in London) and that is an incredible feat.
But the list does not end here. Deepak Punia, who lost his 86kg bronze medal match, also started from this academy, as has Bajrang Punia – a top m contender in 65kg. Neithe them train there any more.
For boys from Delhi, as we the villages and towns that round the capital who aspi be wrestlers, Chhatrasal dium is the ultimate destina They live here in cramped q ters packed with fellow w tlers, living out of duffel b sleeping on mattresses line on the floor, and eagerly aw ing their fathers bringing t milk, fruits and ghee e morning to supplement t diets—that’s the q tessential Chhatr life. It’s the way Ku came up, as did Da
Kumar was 14 w he first came to the dium in 1997 started training u 1982 Asian Games gold med Satpal Singh. By 2012, Chhatr became Indian wrestling’s eq alent of La Masia, the fam football academy of FC Ba lona. That year, two of its tr ees returned with Olympic als—kumar and Dutt. Ano trainee, Amit Dahiya, bec the youngest Indian to com at the Olympics at 18. He ma to the quarter-finals.
Dahiya was already a tra there at that time. He first c to Chhatrasal in 2008 to Kumar when the former w tler had just come back wi bronze from Beijing. By 20 12-year-old Dahiya was a dent student at the wrest school.