A tale, a bout, a girl: A Wknd interview with Antim Panghal

Off the mat, she’s shy, polite. On it, 5’4” of unforgiving fury. The first Indian woman wrestler with consecutive junior world wins is now at the senior Worlds.

Rope-climbing, planks, push-ups (with weights on her back). Then weight-training. Pause. Breathe. Repeat. It feels like a punishing cycle of hurt, even to the onlooker.

“I never knew I could do so much, so fast. With every victory my coaches kept telling me ‘Keep working hard and you can beat the best.’ So, I followed them,” says Panghal, 19. (HT Photo: Sanjeev Verma)

Antim Panghal has been at it for more than two hours, in her morning workout session at the Baba Laldas Akhada in Hisar, Haryana. She’s grimacing and seems like she’s in pain.

Her trainer Bhagat Singh has just about figured out when to tell her to stop. The 19-year-old has taken to teasing him with pitiful eyes, he says. She then scoffs at him when he calls for a break prematurely.

Panghal is training like a fiend because she knows she’s in for the fight of her life.The reigning World Under-20 champion will compete at her maiden World Wrestling Championship (in Serbia; it started on September 16), where a 2024 Paris Olympics berth is at stake. She will then fly to Hangzhou, China, for the Asian Games in October.

If she medals at either of the two events, her life will change, all over again. But that doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had, she says laughing.

Panghal and Singh banter, through their six hours of daily training, about who’s complaining and who’s being stubborn; about why Singh “never seems to be happy” and how, left to herself, “she would never complete a task”.

A daily point of contention, he says laughing, is how long Panghal spends in the swimming pool next door, relaxing after training. “It should be half an hour but it never is.” She will stay there all day if he didn’t remind her to get out, he adds.

Off the mat, Panghal is shy and polite. In many ways, she is still adjusting to the turn her life has taken since she won the World Under-20 Championships for the first time, last year. “There is lot of focus on me, from the media and the wrestling fraternity,” she says. “But I love wrestling. I enjoy winning.”

That becomes evident as soon as she steps on to the mat.

Panghal has an ability to bounce back when it seems like she might be through. In competition, as in training, she pushes on when most people in the room think she’s done. “She is strong and has great reserves of energy,” Singh says.

In Amman, at this year’s Under-20 Worlds in August, she swept through the field with ease, 5’4” of raw power. With the August win, she also became the first woman wrestler from India to win consecutive junior world titles.

She has had to learn how to keep the stress from getting to her, she admits.

“I was just competing as a junior. I never knew I could do so much, so fast,” she says. “With every victory my coaches kept telling me ‘If you keep working hard you have a great future. You can beat the best.’ So, I followed them.”

This was harder than it sounds. Panghal was, after all, competing in the same weight category (53 kg) as the great Vinesh Phogat, 29, a two-time Olympian, two-time world championships medallist and defending Asian Games champion.

Things even came to a head between them, when Panghal won the Asian Games selection trials but Phogat was handed a direct berth as per criteria. Her spirit was crushed, Panghal says. So much so that she and her family moved the Delhi high court. As it turned out, Phogat withdrew from the Asian Games because of a knee injury.

“I have no issues with Vineshdi. She has achieved so much. But this is my dream: the Asian Games, a berth at the Paris Olympics,” Panghal says. “I have worked very hard to come up and I back myself in every bout.”

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Antim (which means “Final”) was famously named because her parents wanted no more girls. She was the fourth girl born to farmers Ram Niwas Panghal and Krishna Kumari, and Antim was their prayer that the next child would be a boy. They love their children, says Krishna Kumari.

Since she was born, Panghal says she has felt nothing but love. “My sisters and I have been encouraged to follow our interests.”

Her passion, since she was nine, was wrestling. And the first people to spot her talent were her parents. She was defeating boys in dangals (mud-wrestling), Ram Niwas says proudly. “She was clearly good at what she was doing.”

They were so convinced of her talent that, three years ago, they sold their farm in Bhagana and moved 25 km to the edges of Hisar so that she could attend the academy where she now trains.

The rewards have come. The family’s prized possession, for instance, which sits gleaming outside their still-unpainted two-room home, is a scooter Panghal won in a dangal last year.

“By God’s grace she doesn’t lose. You don’t have to wake her for training. She gets up every day at 4 am,” Krishna Kumari says. “Her father drops her to the academy and her brother Arpit (the couple did eventually have a son) picks her up. We believe her time will come.”

Maybe it already has.