CHENNAI: Sujeet Kalkal (65kg) and Jaideep (74kg) lost their respective bronze medal bouts to go out of contention for the Paris Olympics quota in Istanbul, Turkey on Sunday. American wrestler Zain Allen Retherford beat Sujeet while Jaideep won his first repechage bout against Arslan Amanmyradov of Turkmenistan only to lose the next against Soner Demirtas of Turkey at the World Olympic Games Qualifier, the last qualifying event for wrestlers.

This means just one male wrestler will represent the country at the sporting extravaganza as only Aman Sehrawat (57kg) won an Olympic quota for India. The last time only one male wrestler represented the country at the Olympics was in the 2000 Sydney Games. Since 2004, three or more male wrestlers competed at the Olympics winning five medals (2 silver and 3 bronze) across the five editions.

The dismal show by the Indian men wrestlers despite their women counterparts making history winning five berths brings the role of all stakeholders under scanner. What could have hurt the wrestlers most was the massive protest against the former Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh that crippled the wrestling activities in the country for almost 14 months.

During this period, the WFI remained suspended with ad-hoc committees managing its affairs. This also saw wrestlers remaining confined to their respective training centres with no national camps, national championships and very few exposure trips that too for a few select wrestlers.

“Those 14 months caused irreparable damage to Indian wrestling,” Sanjay Kumar Singh, the WFI president, told this daily from Istanbul. Vinesh Phogat (50kg), Antim Panghal (53kg), Anshu Malik (57kg), Nisha Dahiya (68kg) and Reetika Hooda (76kg) are the women wrestlers, who qualified for the Games before Aman.

So why did women wrestlers remain unaffected while their male counterparts had to bear the consequences and the WFI chief came up with an interesting reply. “Out of five qualified women, three are the up-and-coming wrestlers which speaks volumes of the work done by the WFI before the protest. The federation put a plan in place since the Tokyo Games and its target was the 2028 Olympics. Antim and Reetika are the products of that plan. Had WFI not suspended, all six Olympic quotas would have been booked.”