India expects medals from these wrestlers today in Tokyo Olympics

Ground Report |New Delhi: India expects medals from these wrestlers; India's hopes of winning a medal in the Olympics are still intact. On Wednesday, two wrestling players have given India the hope of a medal. These two wrestlers are Ravi Dahiya and Deepak Punia. While Ravi plays in the men's freestyle (57kg) category, Deepak plays in the men's freestyle (86kg) category.

India expects medals from these wrestlers

Who is Ravi Dahiya

Born in Nahari village of Sonipat district of Haryana, Ravi Dahiya was working day and night for the last 13 years for the place he has reached today.

The village to which Ravi belongs will have a population of at least 15 thousand, but this village is special in the sense that so far three Olympians have emerged from here. Mahavir Singh participated in the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games while Amit Dahiya participated in the 2012 London Olympic Games.

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Ravi Dahiya has taken this legacy to new heights. From the age of just 10, he started learning wrestling tricks under the guidance of coach Satpal at Chhatrasal Stadium in Delhi. Farmer father Rakesh Dahiya has also contributed in this journey, who in this long time always kept delivering milk, nuts to make his son a champion wrestler.

The struggle of Ravi's father can be gauged from the fact that he used to get up at four o'clock in the morning and walk five kilometers to the nearest railway station and from there to reach the Chhatrasal Stadium, two kilometers away from the Azadpur railway station. This trend has continued for the last 10 years. Ravi Dahiya first caught the attention of the people when he managed to win the silver medal in the Junior World Championships in 2015.

After this, he also won a silver medal in the Under 23 World Championship in 2018. He finished fifth in the Asian Wrestling Championships in 2019 but managed to win the gold medal in the 2020 Asian Wrestling Championships. He continued his success even in 2021 when he won the gold medal of the Asian Wrestling Championship.

He has been counted among medal contenders since he secured an Olympic quota after winning a bronze medal at the 2019 World Championships in Nur Sultan, Kazakhstan. He was also a part of the government scheme Target Olympic Podium Scheme.

Deepak Punia?

Deepak Punia, born in a milk seller family in Chhara village of Jhajjar district of Haryana, has traveled to the Olympics in just 7 years. His father Subhash himself has been delivering homemade milk, nuts, and fruits to Deepak every day from 2015 to 2020 at Chhatrasal Stadium, 60 km away from his home. Whether it is rain, summer, or winter, this cycle has never been broken.

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His family members wanted that Deepak should not face any problem due to lack of diet. Deepak Punia is also called 'Ketli Pehelwan' by his close people. There is a funny incident behind this. Deepak got this nickname when he was only 4 years old.

Something happened that the sarpanch of the village gave Deepak to drink milk kept in a kettle. Deepak drank all the milk in a jiffy. Then the sarpanch gave him another kettle, Deepak got him wet. Then another, then another like this he drank 5 kettles of milk. Everyone was surprised that how can such a small child drink so much milk, just since then he started being called 'ketli wrestler'.

Deepak Punia started wrestling to get a job, he just wanted to earn some money to support his house but his hard work paid off and one by one he won in Vaccade (2016) and Junior Category (2019) Became world champion. In 2019 itself, she qualified for the Olympics by winning a silver medal at the Senior World Championships in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.

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