National Jr wrestling meet to start on Friday

The Tata Motors Junior National Wrestling Championships (Under-23) will start here on Friday, it was announced on Thursday.

The Under-23 championship, which will see the participation of 633 wrestlers from 24 states, is also the first of its kind added to the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) calendar with a view to scout for more talent, according to a statement.

Rajasthan, which hosted the Senior Nationals way back in 2008, also played hosts to the Junior National earlier this year in February at Jaipur.

Speaking on the choice of Chittorgarh, Brij Bhushan Saran, President of the Wrestling Federation of India, said that Rajasthan has the potential to present more wrestlers to the country.

"Our interiors, especially bordering Haryana, have immense talent. We need to tap and bring them to the fore. Besides, in smaller cities hosting an event of this size will generate a lot of interest," he said.

"It will also encourage more youngsters to take to the sport in the near future," he added.

The star attraction of the meet would be the presence of Sajan Bhanwala in Greco Roman 77kg class and Naveen Kumar Sihag in Freestyle 57kg category.

Bhanwala and Naveen had recently won silver medals at the junior world championship in Slovakia and will be raring to go and carve out a special niche for themselves with a gold medal win.

"It was a good experience at the World Juniors, but I am aiming to make the selection grade for the upcoming Senior World Championship. For that, I need to put up a grand show here and impress the selectors," said Sajjan on the eve of the Championship.

The three-day championship, which concludes on September 30, will witness events in one category on each day with as many as 226 teams in the fray for Freestyle, 215 in Greco Roman and 192 in women wrestling.

The opening ceremony will be presided over by Gulab Chand Kataria, Rajasthan Home Minister, along with Brij Bhushan Sharan and Chittorgarh MP, C.P. Joshi.

Olympic medallist Yogeshwar Dutt and 2018 Asian Games medal winner Divya Kakran will also be present to give away the prizes to the winners on Sunday.

--IANS

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