CHENNAI: Olympic-bound Indian wrestlers will not travel to Tokyo with other Indian athletes. Instead, they will head for the Japanese capital from their respective training bases either on July 26 or 27.
The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) informed on Saturday that the first batch of the country’s Tokyo-bound athletes will leave by an Air India chartered flight on July 14. The rest of the contingent will travel between July 16 and 19, said the IOA. However, the travel plan of wrestlers seems to be different.
At the moment, five Indian wrestlers — Bajrang Punia (65kg), Ravi Dahiya (57kg), Deepak Punia (86kg), Vinesh Phogat (53kg) and Anshu Malik (57kg) — are training abroad. The men grapplers are in Russia while their women counterparts are in Estonia. Anshu, along with coach Kuldeep Malik, is scheduled to return to the country on July 12. The other two qualified female wrestlers — Seema Bisla (50kg) and Sonam Malik (62kg) — have been training in the country.
Even though SAI has advised athletes training abroad to travel directly to Tokyo to minimise the risk of the contracting virus during transit, Anshu wanted to meet her parents before leaving for her maiden Games.
“Anshu and Kuldeep will leave Estonia on July 11 and reach India the next day. Vinesh, who is training with them, will fly to Hungary on July 11. They will follow the SOPs on reaching the country including uploading their health status for each of the seven days prior to departure,” a Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) official told this daily. “All of them will leave for Tokyo either on July 26 or 27 from their respective bases,” added the official. It was learnt that Anshu will be administered the second dose of Covid vaccination on reaching the country.
The Tokyo Games will be held from July 23 to August 8 with the wrestling competitions commencing on August 1.
Mirabai to fly out of US on July 15
Meanwhile, weightlifter Mirabai Chanu, along with coach Vijay Sharma, will fly out of her training base in the USA on July 15 for Tokyo. They will head to the Games Villages directly on arrival.