Following the footsteps of top Indian wrestlers, who have chosen Asian Games over the World Championships, the top three Indian coaches have also decided to skip the prestigious world event in order to concentrate helping their wards win medals at the upcoming Asian Games in Incheon, Korea, starting on September 19.
dna has learnt that Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) has withdrawn the names of chief national freestyle coach Vinod Kumar, men's chief national Greco-Roman coach Kuldeep Sehrawat and women's chief freestyle coach Kuldeep Malik from the list of coaches and officials travelling to Tashkent for the World Championships.
Instead, WFI has decided to send three foreign coaches – Vladimir Mestvirishvili (freestyle), Emzar Makharadze (Greco-Roman) and Roin Doborjginidze (female) to the World Championships starting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from September 8.
WFI earlier decided to send a second-string team to the Worlds and now with not sending top Indian coaches to Tashkent, there is absolutely no doubt that India's top priority is not to give their wrestlers a world-class exposure but to win "more medals" at the Asiad.
Even the double Olympic medallist and 2010 World Championships gold medal winner Sushil Kumar has been forced to skip this premier event after he earlier decided to skip Asiad in order to gain more experience against playing world's top wrestlers in Tashkent. Sushil, after winning gold at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, declared that the experience a wrestler gets from competing against the top grapplers at the Worlds is "unparalleled".
However, he later on decided to skip even the Worlds in the name of staying focussed for 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
This has now left all Indian wrestlers travelling to Tashkent without the services of any Indian coaches in all three categories. "We feel it difficult to converse with foreign coaches because of the language barrier. It would be really difficult to express our viewpoint or to even discuss any technical point with non-Indian coaches," said a Tashkent-bound wrestler on condition of anonymity, adding: "Not just this, most of us are not very comfortable with foreign coaches."
When asked for his comment, chief coach Vinod Kumar confirmed that an arrangement has been worked out where national coaches will travel to the Asian Games and foreign coaches to the World Championships.
"We're sending our 'B' team to the World Championships while the top wrestlers have been taking part in the Asian Games. This is the main reason for us not travelling to Tashkent."
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