Eye on Olympics, Deepak Punia leads India’s challenge in Asian wrestling

The pre-dawn quiet is broken by the thud of sculpted bodies crashing on the foam mat. Double Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar gazes down from a giant portrait as Deepak Punia goes through a two-hour mat session where he tosses around men weighing 30kg heavier. Soaked in sweat and panting heavily, his heavy hands move like well-oiled pistons, choking a sparring partner one moment and enveloping him in a mean gut wrench the next. The morning has well and truly begun at Chhatrasal Stadium.

In a couple of days, Punia will lead India’s challenge at the Asian Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan — a tournament originally scheduled in New Delhi before unprecedented protests by India’s elite wrestlers accusing the Wrestling Federation of India bosses of harassment led to UWW, the world wrestling body, shifting out the competition.

The chaotic start to the year also meant most top wrestlers, including Punia, missed the Zagreb Open and the Ibrahim Moustafa Ranking Series in Egypt, robbing them of crucial competition in the pre-Olympic year.

Punia used the time to recuperate from an Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL) injury to his right elbow he sustained at a training camp in Michigan last year, days after winning his Commonwealth Games (CWG) gold. The injury forced him to skip the world championships that followed.

Though he recovered by December, the 23-year-old resumed mat training only a week back. At the Asian meet, he will compete in the non-Olympic 92kg division.

“This will be my first competition of the year, so my primary goal is to assess my game readiness. Since this isn’t an Olympic qualifier, I decided not to cut weight and instead focus on getting back into competitive rhythm. I will keep switching between 86kg and 92kg till this year’s world championships depending on the competitions,” he said.

“I am completely fit and free from niggles. I don’t feel any rust, but competitions are a different ball game than training or sparring."

Punia’s weight management is also dictated by his thyroid condition, which was diagnosed only last year.

“His thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) value, when we first got it checked, was around 15mIU/L. The ideal level should be around 4-5mIU/L. We have managed to bring it down significantly but that is one of the factors we consider when he decides to gain or lose weight. We didn't want him to lose too much weight in too little time because that would make him weak,” Punia’s physio Shubham Gupta said.

Punia's short but successful international career has been marked by injuries, some of which have cost him major competitions. Before he missed last year's worlds, Punia had to pull out of the 2019 world championships final due to ankle injury. The Armyman from Haryana was already carrying a thumb and shoulder injury in that tournament.

In June 2021, the Olympics-bound wrestler pulled out of the Poland Open to avoid aggravating a left elbow injury. He also endured a rib fracture after last year’s CWG to go with the UCL (ulnar collateral ligament) tear in his right elbow.

Gupta said Punia’s injuries are more an occupational hazard.

“There are athletes who don't respond well to increasing the training load, but that’s not the case with Deepak. All his injuries have been impact injuries. He has managed to avoid surgeries so far which means the body is capable of healing with conservative methods. This means he doesn't have a mental block during bouts that surgeries may sometime lead to,” Gupta said.

Punia is training under Russian Kamel Malikov for about two months now. The wrestler feels the move has already begun to pay dividends.

“Kamel has a very scientific approach. He doesn’t believe in overtraining, is very open with his inputs and has taught me some new mat moves. With things like ‘situational bouts’, he gives me various scenarios that may arise during a bout,” Punia said.

With the Paris Olympics barely a year away, Punia insists on the need for quality training and competition. “I would like to go to Dagestan to train soon after the Asian championships. Quality sparring in higher weight classes in India is a problem.”

The near-miss in the Tokyo Games, where he lost the bronze playoff to San Marino's Myles Amine in the dying seconds, still hurts. Having played that bout a million times in his head, Punia objectively assesses what went wrong.

“I was more focussed on running the clock down than grappling. In the final few seconds, I was constantly looking at the clock, and when I was not looking, I was counting the seconds in my head. Somehow, my calculation went wrong, my grip eased and Amine was able to capitalise. I have learnt my lesson and will try to make amends in Paris. That journey begins in Astana.”

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