Why our gold medal-winning wrestlers owe their success to world champion Sushil Kumar

India's medal-winning wrestlers must thank Sushil

Why our gold medal-winningu00a0wrestlers owe their success to world champion Sushil Kumar

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The legendary Late Kashabha Dadasaheb Jadhav, India's first individual Olympic medallist (bronze at the 1952 Helsinki Games) in whose honour the CWG wrestling arena is named here, would have been smiling up in heaven as three of his countrymen ufffd Ravinder Singh, Sanjay Singh and Anil Kumar ufffd floored their opponents with authority to clinch gold at the Games yesterday.

Another wrestling stalwart, and a living being, who would have also had a broad smile across his face after India's triple success yesterday is 2008 Beijing Olympic bronze medallist and world champion, Sushil Kumar.

Upswing
Sushil is the man responsible for Indian wrestling's upswing, reckon members of the battlers' contingent here after three of their teammates bagged gold medals in the Greco Roman category on Day One of competition.

While Ravinder pinned down England's Christopher Terence Bosson into submission (winning 9-0) in the 60kg category, Sanjay (74kg) got the better of South Africa's Richard Addinal 2-0 while Anil Kumar was slapped and even head-butted before beating Australian Hassene Fkiri 6-0 to give India three gold medals in the event.

"Sushil gave Indian wrestling a fillip by beating the world's best. His influence has rubbed off on the entire wrestling contingent ufffd these three wrestlers included," said Greco Roman coach Hargobind Singh. Dev Anand, another coach of the Greco Roman bunch, said that the humble Sushil was constantly in touch with his teammates. "Sushil is always accessible to any wrestler. He has encouraged and mentored these three too.

They are all from Haryana and even train with him sometimes.

"It's not always possible to train with him because he is a star and has his own training methods. But he constantly advises and encourages them. Sushil is one of the most humble men you will come across. He has absolutely no airs about himself despite being an Olympic medal-winner and world champion. Even if a child in a crowd approaches him, he will bend over and acknowledge the kid," said Anand.

Meanwhile, winner Ravinder is plain happy that Sushil's superstardom has benefited wrestling. "Wrestling used to be a poor man's sport, but now Sushil has shown that it can make for a decent career too," he says.u00a0

Success in the CWG need not stop here, reckons coach Anand. "There are 21 golds on offer in wrestling and the Indian contingent is confident of bagging at least 14. I can't be sure if all 14 will be gold though," he said.

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