WFI not happy with women wrestlers' show at CWG, to review performance

Commonwealth Games and missed out on gold medals. All 12 Indian wrestlers won medals at the Games, returning with six gold, a silver and five bronze. From among women, only Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik won gold while Anshu Malik, who was also a gold medal favourite, returned with silver in 57kg category.

Pooja Gehlot (50kg), Divya Kakran (68kg) and Pooja Sihag (76kg) settled for bronze despite a thin and weak field. In the 50kg category, only six wrestlers competed. Pooja lost her bout to Canada's Madison Bianca Parks before winning the bronze play-off.

The 76kg category had eight wrestlers while the 68kg class featured nine wrestlers, where minnows like Bangladesh, Mauritius, Cameroon, Tonga and New Zealand were part of the field. The only worthy competitor for Divya was Nigeria's Blessing Oborududu, the Tokyo Olympics silver medallist. Divya could hardly pose a challenge to her, failing to score a single point and later overpowered poor Blandine Nyeh Ngiri from Cameroon to claim a bronze.

Interestingly, Divya has been demanding 'respect and support' from the Delhi government, though she began to represent Uttar Pradesh from 2018 onwards. However, the biggest disappointment for the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) is that talented Anshu Malik could not win gold in 57kg. Anshu had a good final opponent in African champion Odunayo Folasade Adekuoroye, who is seven years older than the Nidani woman.

"It was not a great show by our women wrestlers. If you are not winning such a weak field, what it reflects on your performance," said one official of the WFI. "We are going to sit with the wrestlers and review the performance.