World Junior Wrestling championship finalist Sajjan Bhanwala and Naveen Kumar Sihag are hogging limelight as the star attractions of the Tata Motors National Junior Wrestling Championship in Chittorgarh.
Big-time wrestling is coming to the fort city for the first time as Tata Motors Junior National Wrestling Championships (Under-23) gets underway here today (Friday).
The Under-23 championship, which will see the participation of 633 wrestlers from 24 States, is also the first of its kind added to the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) calendar with a view to scout more talent and encourage young wrestlers to the sport which getting popular by the day.
WFI, which allotted the tournament to Chittorgarh, will help Rajasthan unearth new talent from the state as this will be the third such occasion when it has held national-level championships. Rajasthan, which hosted the Senior Nationals way back in 2008, also played hosts to Junior National earlier this year in February at Jaipur.
Talking on the choice of Chittorgarh, Brij Bhushan Saran, President of the Wrestling Federation of India said that Rajasthan has the potential to present more wrestlers to the country. “Our interiors, especially bordering Haryana, have immense talent. We need to tap and bring them to the fore. Besides, in smaller cities hosting an event of this size will generate a lot of interests,” he said. “It will also encourage more youngsters taking to the sport in the near future,” he added.
The star attraction of the meet would be the presence of Sajjan Bhanwala in Greco Roman 77kg class and Naveen Kumar Sihag in Freestyle 57kg category. Bhanwala and Naveen had recently won silver medals at the junior world championship in Slovakia and will be raring to go and carve out a special niche for themselves with a gold medal win.
“It was a good experience at the World Juniors, but I am aiming to make the selection grade for the upcoming Senior World Championship. For that, I need to put up a grand show here and impress the selectors,” said Sajjan on the eve of the Championship.
The 3-day Championship, which concludes on September 30, will witness events in one category on each day with as many as 226 teams in fray for Freestyle, 215 in Greco Roman and 192 in women wrestling. The Opening Ceremony will be presided over by Shri. Gulab Chand Kataria, the Hon’ble Home Minister of Rajasthan, along with Brij Bhushan Sharan, WFI Chief, and Chittorgarh MP, C.P. Joshi.
The icing on the cake for the Chittorgarh spectators and the wrestlers competing at the event will be the presence of Olympic medallist Yogeshwar Dutt and 2018 Asian Games medal winner Divya Kakran, who will give away the prizes to the winners on Sunday.
Tata Motors Commercial Vehicle Unit has been driving Indian wrestling forward as the Principal Sponsors of the Indian wrestling.
No comments:
Post a Comment