CHENNAI : Railway Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) called off the wrestling coaching camp scheduled to be held in Mumbai from March 25 to April 24 due to the deadly coronavirus outbreak. A total of 68 wrestlers apart from coaches and trainers were supposed to be part of the camp. “In view of the outbreak of novel coronavirus, it has been decided to call off the wrestling coaching camp at Parel (Mumbai),” read a letter issued by the RSPB to all its affiliates. The order also meant that the special casual leave sanctioned for players for the above-mentioned period will be treated as cancelled.
“A total of 33 freestyle and 29 Greco-Roman wrestlers were named in the list prepared for the camp. Apart from them, six women wrestlers, three coaches each in three styles, trainers, local managers and attendants were in the list,” a coach, who was part of the scheduled camp, told this daily. “The RSPB organises camp frequently for the wrestlers.
The last camp was held in February-March in Delhi. Now we have asked these wrestlers to train individually. They have also been advised to shun practice bouts to ensure they remain infection free,” added the coach. The grapplers, who were in the national camps being conducted by the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), were not named by the RSPB. “As the last date for reporting for the camp was March 25, the wrestlers fortunately didn’t reach the venue.
New dates will be announced once situation gets under control,” signed off the coach. Earlier, WFI had suspended national camps for men and women grapplers going on in Sonepat and Lucknow respectively till March 31. The iconic Chhatrasal Stadium also decided to shut down in the wake of the pandemic a week ago. Besides, the Haryana and Punjab governments had instructed all sports training centres including akharas operating in the states to close down till March 31.