The wrestler’s home

The wrestling school at Chhatrasal, Kumar, and Indian wrestling became synonymous over the years. When he won a bronze at the 2008 Olympics, becoming only the second Indian wrestler— after Kashabha Dadasaheb Jadhav in 1952 — to win an Olympic medal, it bought immediate fame to the school. Budding wrestlers thronged the centre.

“We used to have just a few trainees here, nothing out of the ordinary,” said a former Chhatrasal coach who had trained Sushil and who did not wish to be named. “After his medal, there was such a mad rush that we had to turn back hundreds of wrestlers.”

Along with the fame, the complex began to improve too. Before 2008, it had just one Olympic standard wrestling mat, and one traditional earthen pit. Wrestlers lived crammed in tiny, low-roofed housing directly under the stadium’s rafters. By 2012, when Kumar won his second Olympic medal -- a silver -becoming the only Indian to win two individual medals at the Olympics, the stadium had undergone a massive transformation to house the hundreds of wrestlers who came to learn under Kumar. Now there were plenty of Olympic mats, a stateof-the-art gym and a constant buzz in training.

2012 was Chhatrasal’s year; Yogeshwar Dutt, who won a bronze at the London Games, was also a product of the school (and Kumar’s childhood training partner and friend). Another trainee from the school, Amit Dahiya, became the youngest wrestler from India to compete at the Olympics -- he made it to the quarterfinals.

Many more wrestling stars followed -- a superb second line that includes current Tokyo Olympic medal favourite Bajrang Punia. In fact, along with Punia, two other Tokyo-bound wrestlers — Ravi Dahiya and Deepak Punia — also learnt their wrestling at Chhatrasal.

“If there was a revolution in the sport in India, it was led by Kumar, from this very stadium,” said the coach quoted earlier. “Over here, he was simply “pehelwan” and everything happened with his knowledge. He was the driving force.”

Kumar rose to become an administrator at the Delhi-government run stadium that became famous because of him.

But despite the fame and the stature, or perhaps because of it, cracks also began to appear in the running of Chhatrasal’s wrestling school. By the end of 2012, Dutt and Kumar had a public fallout, resulting in Dutt leaving the centre and opening his own wrestling school. There were fallouts with coaches too, including one incident where a senior coach alleged that Kumar had assaulted him. The coach left and joined Dutt.