When a tall, young wrestler with a slight lethargic body-type entered the KD Jadhav arena in the spring of February 2020, little did anyone present there knew that history will be created on the same night. But seven hours after his first bout Kumar was climbing at the top of the podium. And with India’s national anthem was reaching a crescendo, he had etched his name in history books.
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Kumar had ended India’s 27-years long drought of a gold medal in Greco-Roman division at Asian Championship. Pappu Yadav was the last to win the title in 1993.
“It feels great to better your performance and change the medal colour from silver to gold. I have worked a lot on my ground wrestling techniques in the last one year and improved my defence. That helped me today,” he said after his final bout.
But his journey would have almost ended if it was not for that come-from-behind semi-final win. Kumar was trailing behind 8-1 against his Kazakh opponent Azamat Kustubayev but he made a great comeback, grabbing 11 points on the trot to win the bout at 12-8.
Kumar is now India’s biggest hope for the Olympics. The country is yet to qualify for the 87kg division and will be throwing their hat in fray for it at the Asian and World Qualifiers next year.
