Budding wrestlers hone skills under his tutelage

Sameer Singh

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, October 11

Wrestler Gurlal Singh (39) from Aklia Kalan village has been nurturing the skills of budding wrestlers of different villages.

Gurlal, who runs two wrestling centres at Ganga (Shri Guru Ram Dass wrestling coaching centre) and at Bangi Rughu village, wants to provide a platform to budding wrestlers and keep the youngsters of villages away from drugs.

Gurlal had won a bronze medal in the World Veteran Wrestling Championship held in Plovin, Bulgaria, in 2017. He has also participated in the next edition of the championship at Skopje, Macedonia, in 2018. He participates in the freestyle category.

At present, he has been training budding wrestlers aged between 15 and 25 years. At both centres, more than 50 youngsters have been getting training in wrestling.

Gurlal said, “My motive has always been 'catch them young' before youngsters fall prey to drugs or any other immoral things. We visit villages and try to find youngsters who show a bit inclination towards the game. Thereafter, we convince them to opt for the game. We have created a conducive environment for fitness training or coaching for wrestling. Besides, we work on budding players in a way that they can build strong will power and develop physical strength.”

Gurlal has won several state and national-level wrestling championships before being selected in the Indian team to represent the country at the international level two years ago.  

One of his trainees Sandeep Singh has won bronze medals in the Asian Cadet Wrestling Championship held in Taiwan in 2016 and in Thailand in 2017. Besides, his trainees have been making their mark at state as well as national level.

“First, we give initial training to youngsters. If a player wants to take his game to the next level, we get them inducted into another professional training centre where he can train more effectively,” he said.

Talking about how he started his journey, Gurlal said, “One day, I was playing kabaddi when I was in Class VI. During the game, another player entered into an argument with me. We had exchanged blows. Our sports teacher was observing this incident closely. He asked us to wrestle in a proper way. And despite being elder to me, I managed to pin him down amid applaud from others. From that day onwards, it was clear to me that I was going to be a wrestler.”

Sharing his future plans, Gurlal said, “We are collaborating with stakeholders and planning to introduce a centre or club for budding wrestlers.”