Sakshi Malik, Sangeeta Phogat skip Asian Games wrestling trials

File image of ace wrestler Sakshi Malik. AFP

Wrestlers Sakshi Malik and Sangeeta Phogat decided to skip the trials for this year’s Asian Games that took place over the weekend in New Delhi.

Sakshi and Sangeeta, who were part of the recent wrestlers’ protests against the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and their outgoing president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, thus effectively ruled themselves out of the continental games that will take place in September and October in China’s Hangzhou this year.

Unlike leading wrestlers Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia, neither Sakshi nor Sangeeta was offered an exemption from trials by the Indian Olympic Association’s (IOA) ad-hoc committee that is currently in charge of the WFI. Vinesh and Bajrang have been offered direct entry into the Asian Games in the women’s 53kg and men’s 65kg categories respectively.

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Sakshi, meanwhile, has maintained she had never asked for any such exemption and alleged that the direct entries were the ruling government’s attempt at breaking the wrestlers’ unity.

The trials took place in New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium; while the women’s trials took place on Saturday, the men’s trials were conducted on the following day.

Antim Panghal and Vishal Kalicharan would go on to win the trial in the categories in which Vinesh and Bajrang had been offered direct entries, thus making them standbys instead of the wrestlers representing India in the main event later this year.

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Both Antim, who had unsuccessfully filed a petition at the Delhi High Court against the exemption, and Vishal vowed to take the matter to the Supreme Court of India and try and get the exemptions offered to Vinesh and Bajrang reversed.

Vinesh, Bajrang and Sakshi were the faces of the wrestlers’ protest that had briefly taken place in January earlier this year and intensified during the months of April and May in the national capital.

They had demaned WFI president and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Brij Bhushan’s resignation and arrest, accusing him of sexually harassing several women wrestlers.