All our wrestlers were training with Chief Coach Jagminder ji, Rajeev Tomar and myself since a long time. I am glad that what was expected, it happened. We expected Ravi’s great performance from the very beginning. He was consistently performing well. He won gold medal in Asian Championship for two consecutive years. Even in the last few days, he showed his good form by winning the silver medal at the Poland Open.
Ravi had lost the lead against Kazakhstan’s Nurislam Sanayev in the semi-finals, but Ravi got the better in a Do or Die match. He adopted a good strategy and exploited Nurislam’s weaknesses. Now we are not giving him much instructions because he is a very intelligent wrestler. He understands it very quickly as it is explained to him.
If God wishes, we will give the good news on Thursday. We told Ravi that every wrestling match has to be played like a final. Not to make any mistake and to force the opponent to make mistakes. We also explained to him that Olympics is held once in four years. One small mistake brings regret for four years. The effort should be to perform one hundred percent here and live up to the expectations of the countrymen.
Deepak had won the World Junior Championship gold a few years back. He made his intentions known by reaching the final of the World Championship in senior. After defeating the Nigerian wrestler in a one-sided bout, he defeated the Chinese wrestler with his bravery. We have been training for the last three months. In the time of first Covid wave, we continued training in Bhalgarh while following social distancing. Then the wrestlers landed in the ranking tournament in Poland. Then there was a coaching camp. From there we went to Russia.
(The author is the coach of the Indian team and has also been an international wrestler of his time)