When Sushil Kumar won the World Championship gold in 2010, he termed it as the biggest achievement of his life. However, four years down the line, the wrestler will skip the event to be held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from September 14-18 because the focus will be on Asian Games starting a few days later.
Sushil will not be the only wrestler skipping World Championships as two other Commonwealth Games gold medallists Yogeshwar Dutt and Amit Kumar will also be asked by the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) to do so for the same reason.
The WFI has decided to divide core group of wrestlers so that they can participate in both the world Championship as the Asian Games will commence from September 19 to October 4 in Incheon, South Korea.
Officials of the federation believe that this is necessary to carry forward India's gold winning performance at the Asian Games and for that they don't want to tinker with the combination that won at the CWG in Glasgow recently.
Even women CWG medallists Babita Kumari and Vinesh Phogat will be skipping the WC for Asian Games. WFI has asked chief coach Vinod Kumar to select two teams for the upcoming events.
Kumar has called all the wrestlers for a single selection trial on August 13 at the Sports Authority of India's Sonepat centre. dna has learnt that Sushil and Dutt may be exempted from appearing for the trials because of their seniority. While, the other core group of wrestlers will be divided into two sets.
In all probability, top group of wrestlers will comprise CWG gold medallists Sushil, Dutt, Amit Kumar Dahiya, silver medallists Bajrang Kumar, Satyavrat, Rajeev Tomar and bronze winner Pavan Kumar.
The second set of wrestlers, to be selected for the WC, will include upcoming grapplers, who are undergoing training at the SAI centre.
"We'll be conducting trials to select two sets of players who will participate in the Asian Games and World Championships," Kumar said on Tuesday, adding: "Senior players like Sushil and Yogeshwar are our automatic choice for Asiad. So, they can be exempted from the trials. Those who emerge victorious in the trials will be selected for the Asiad, while the second best will participate in the World Championships."
The same rule will apply to the women wrestlers too.
Greco Roman category will also mark its return to the Asian Games after being dropped from the CWG.
Kumar said that the logic behind selecting two teams is basically because of the short interval between the two events. "There is hardly any time gap between two events and it's difficult for any wrestler to gain or lose weight in that short period," he said.
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