Vinesh Phogat to fight at Wrestling Nationals, Sakshi Malik seen at the venue

Vinesh Phogat is among some of the biggest names in Indian wrestling set to take part in the Senior National Championships that gets underway in Jaipur on Saturday. Besides two-time World Championships bronze medallist Phogat, who competes in the 55kg category, Anshu Malik (59 kg), Sarita Mor (59 kg), Nisha Dahiya (68 kg) and Sunil Kumar (87 kg) will also be fighting it out for a place in the Indian wrestling team for this year’s Paris Olympics. Additionally, Sakshi Malik, the 2016 Rio Olympics bronze medallist who had recently announced her retirement from the sport, was also seen at the venue that will host the three-day National Championships. Both Vinesh and Anshu are making comebacks from knee injuries, with the former having last made an appearance at a major event in the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Antim Panghal is the only Indian wrestler to have clinched an Olympic quota so far, having done so with a 53 kg bronze in the World Championships in Belgrade last year, and the IOA-appointed ad-hoc panel that is currently in charge of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), will be hoping for more names to join the Paris-bound team in the coming days. The tournament, which will be taking place in Jaipur’s Railway Stadium, also takes place in the backdrop of an ongoing tussle between the Anurag Thakur-led Sports Ministry and the Sanjay Singh-led WFI, which had been suspended shortly after elections in December and was replaced by the ad-hoc panel. The suspended WFI Executive Committee had recently organised their version of the ‘National Championships’ in Pune, which the Sports Ministry would later describe as an ‘unsanctioned event’. Only a handful of wrestlers who are participating in the official National Championships in Jaipur had participated in the Pune event. Read | Sakshi, Bajrang slam suspended WFI for organising Nationals, 'distributing fake certificates' Wrestling, which had contributed with two medals for India in the Tokyo Olympics, had come to a complete standstill after some of the leading wrestlers, Phogat included, organised a sit-in protest againt then-WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. The Bharatiya Janata Party MP had been accused of, and later charged with, sexually harassing several female wrestlers and the protesting wrestlers had called for his resignation, and later arrest. The WFI was even suspended by the United World Wrestling — the body that is in charge of amateur wrestling at a global level — after the federation elections, that were initially supposed to take place in August last year, got postponed. The Indian wrestlers that competed in the world championships in Belgrade, Serbia in September had to do so as neutral athletes, and not representing the tricolour.