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Chhatrasal to cut down on trainees after attack on coach
Tokyo silver medallist Ravi Dahiya will be part of the committee that will select the residential wrestlers at the academy
Chhatrasal Stadium, the nursery of freestyle wrestling talent in India, is planning to slash the number of trainees to rein in incidents of indiscipline. The development comes a day after a wrestler beat up referee-coach Jaibir Dahiya in his room. On Wednesday, Delhi government's Directorate of Education, that runs the stadium administration, ordered the wrestlers to vacate the hostel.
"Currently we have about 250 wrestlers across age groups who train here and there are only five coaches to monitor them, which means disciplining them is an issue. We feel there is the need to cut down the number of trainees to weed out bad elements. We won't have more than 100 trainees now," Lalit Kumar, chief wrestling coach at the stadium, said.
The Directorate is in the process of forming a committee to select the trainees and the coaches are learnt to have collated the list of resident wrestlers with their achievements. The dossier will be analysed by the committee and only those who are approved will be called back.
"Ravi Dahiya will be part of the committee as he is the Assistant Director. At least few, if not all, wrestling coaches will be part of it along with some coaches from other sports too. There will be 2-3 Section Officers, one Assistant Director (Ravi), and a Deputy Director in the committee as well," Kumar added. "Performance and potential will be the only criterion. We always conduct a trial before inducting boys but there was never a cap on the intake. However, we feel the need to limit the number of resident wrestlers now. Over the years, the number of trainees have increased but the same can't be said about the coaching staff."
The committee is likely to be formed over the next few days and the retained wrestlers will be back in the residential facility "within 10 days."
As of now, only a handful of wrestlers are staying in the stadium. These include Istanbul World Olympic Qualifiers-bound trio of Aman Sehrawat (57kg), Deepak Punia (86kg), Sumit Malik (125kg), Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Ravi Dahiya (57kg), and 2023 Asian Championships bronze medallist Anirudh Kumar (125kg) along with their sparring partners.
Thursday's morning session was held in the old ground floor hall — revered among wrestlers as the place where two-time Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar honed his skills — instead of the sprawling basement where wrestling activities moved about three years back.
"We moved to the basement to accommodate more wrestlers, but with the crowd gone, Thursday's session was a throwback to the earlier years. It's a bit eerie to be in a vacant stadium that was be buzzing with activity until a day back, but we are ready to do whatever it takes to discipline the boys," Kumar said.
