CHENNAI: Yet another wrestler from renowned Phogat family made his mark on the mat by winning a medal on the concluding day of the Cadet National Championship in Patna on Tuesday. Seventeen-year-old Dushyant Phogat lost to Delhi’s Deepak in the 80kg freestyle final to settle for silver, his first medal at the national level. He is the youngest of the five children of Dronacharya award winning wrestling coach Mahavir Phogat. The other four are daughters — Geeta, Babita, Sangita and Ritu. The film Dangal was based on this family.
“Yes, my brother won a silver medal in the sub-junior nationals today,” Geeta, the first Indian woman wrestler to win a Commonwealth Games gold, said. Babita took to Twitter to congratulate Dushyant.
“My younger brother won a silver in 80kg freestyle at the cadet national championship representing Haryana in Patna today. May he keep working hard and keep winning medals for the country. My best wishes are with him. Let’s take Phogat family’s legacy a notch higher,” she tweeted. Interestingly,
Dushyant didn’t find a mention in Dangal, the movie that captured the struggles and achievements of the Phogat family and brought his sisters to prominence. The blockbuster movie, which released in December 2016, highlighted how Mahavir broke taboos to train his daughters and helped them become champion wrestlers despite resistance from the society.
“He had won a gold in the past, but that was in the school nationals. The silver medal he won in Patna today is his first in a national-level competition. Mahavir ji trains him,” Pawan Kumar Saroha, an international wrestler in the 86kg weight category and Geeta’s husband, said.The three-day event began on Sunday with bouts in 10 weight categories of Greco-Roman style of wrestling. Women’s competitions and contests in the 55kg and 65kg men’s freestyle categories were held the next day. The championship concluded with bouts in the remaining eight weight categories in men’s freestyle on Tuesday.