City gymnast wins four medals at National School Games 2019

Sukhnoor Preet Kaur has won over 50 medal in past 10 years

Sameer Singh

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, November 29

A city-based gymnast Sukhnoor Preet Kaur Dhaliwal (14) has won 14 medals in state and national-level championships held in the past one year. Dhaliwal, who started practicing gymnastics at a tender age of four, has in her kitty more than 50 medals in district, state and national-level games in the past 10 years. She won two silver medals and two bronze medals in U-14 category in the recently concluded National School Games held at Agra from November 10 to November 14.

Prior to this, she won five gold medals in the state level games conducted under state government’s ‘Mission Tandurast Punjab’ and five gold medals in the state school games this year.

After her successful performances in various competitions under the guidance of her coach Sher Singh, a Punjab Police personnel, Sukhnoorpreet moved to Mohali in 2016, to get professional training from the Punjab Institute of Sports (PIS) and joined studying Shamrock School in Class VIII. She is now training under her coach Gurmeet Kaur Saini.

Dhaliwal won her first gold medal in a state-level competition, when she was just six. Talking to Bathinda Tribune, Sapinder Singh Dhaliwal, her father, said: “She was quite flexible and agile from the beginning and after noticing this, a friend of mine suggested me to provide her professional training for gymnastics. We were living in Jiwansinghwala village and later shifted to Guru Tegh Bahadur Nagar in Bathinda.”

Singh, who is a property dealer and farmer, said: “We are extremely happy for our daughter’s wonderful performance at the national games. With the kind of efforts she has been putting, we are quite hopeful that she will make the country proud by winning a medal at an international event in the near future.”

“We do not want her to stay away from home but at the same time, we cannot hold her back by not letting her realise her dream or the true calling in life. She was learning quite well here but owing to absence of advanced infrastructure and equipment, we had to move her to Mohali for professional training. She has exhibited wonderful performances at the national-level games and there are possibilities of her name being picked-up for Asian Games. She has been working hard to sharpen her skills.”