There are still boxing centres across India with few or no coaches. “There are hordes graduating from Sports Authority of India (SAI) every year. They can be taken in on contract-basis,” says PK Muralidharan Raja, the secretary-general of the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation. A poor man’s sport, boxing now offers a new, accessible path to greatness.
Ditto for wrestling, where Sushil Kumar says he owes his win to the coaches the Chhatrasal Stadium. “The trust between the guru and the wrestler is very important, because a big part of a wrestler’s development involves controlling what he eats, when he sleeps, how he trains,” explains Satpal, the Dronacharya awardee who coached Sushil. The 6-litre milk, quarter-kg ghee, and badaam thandaai consumed daily by Sushil, and the pattern of cross-training (Sushil’s included running, sprint, sauna bath, basketball, handball) was a highly individual chart jotted down for the grappler.

The future of wrestling will also hinge on the Indian metro’s correct understanding of the hinterland, as far as pumping in money is concerned. Yashvir Singh Dabas, also a coach at Chhatrasal, adds a note of caution concerning strongmen — most of whom hail from interiors of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. “Wrestlers come up in a certain culture. If you try and mix them elsewhere, they’ll be lost. It’s a rough-tough sport, and luxuries like air-conditioned living-quarters are secondary. Wrestlers, as a breed, prefer staying together. They move as a flock, and don’t demand things like one to a room,” he says. The talent coming from villages cannot be transplanted bag-and-baggage into an alien environment of needless comforts, he adds.
The help wrestlers expect, again, is human — physios and doctors. Where the expertise counts hugely is in a grappler’s technical back-up. “The rules keep changing. From the time we started, bouts have come down from an hour to six minutes, and competition from four days to one. Keeping up to date with it all is necessary,” says Satpal, adding that mats at all centres would be a big help, though that alone will not fetch more medals. The wrestlers had availed of foreign coaches and exposure tours abroad in the run-up, but the medal-clinching effort boiled down to Sushil and Satpal’s tactical acumen.

Sushil’s success has caught the eye of the Mittal Trust, who are drawing up plans for this medal-prospective sport, and co-ordinator Manisha Malhotra admits that when extending funding, a great deal depends on the shortlisting done by the respective associations. “We go by research, press, association, stats, background, where’s our standing in the world, results from nationals and international tournaments. And in some inspired cases, even hearsay,” she laughs. Consultants prepare a thick dossier and, in case of the boxers, a Turkish coach pitched in with the second opinion. “Then, the help is an add-on, like in Abhinav’s case we tied up a few loose ends. Or got the physio for the boxers.”
As Indian sport dawns to a new sunrise with its Olympic afterglow, the money is now only a small part of the problem. It’s time to play to our strength — the billion-strong human resource that is diverse and unique.