Jhajjar’s Mansi settles for silver

 Vinayak Padmadeo

New Delhi, July 20

Her eyes welled up when asked about her disappointing loss against Japan’s Akie Hanai. Asked to analyse the loss, all she could conjure was a nod. Mansi wasn’t expecting the final of the 57kg freestyle event at the junior Asian Championships on home front to be this one-sided. The young wrestler’s inability to explain her failings in the final was justified after her 10-0 defeat against her Japanese opponent.

Asked whether she had fought Hanai before or seen her style in video footage, Mansi shook her head. But eventually she opened up about herself and the family. Her father Pawan Kumar runs a departmental store in Jhajjar’s Seria village. Mansi and her younger sister Khushi cycle 10km to reach the training venue in Rohtak. The girls are then joined by their proud father when they return to their village.

Mansi started to train as a gymnast first but switched over to wrestling after getting fascinated by other girls who were training to become wrestlers. “I saw the other girls training and I got interested in wrestling and so I left gymnastics. This was four years ago,” Mansi said. For someone who has been training for a little over four years, Mansi has done well so far. Prior to Friday’s silver, Mansi had won a silver medal at last year’s Cadet Asian Championship in Bangkok.

She has to go back to the drawing board to prepare for the trials for the Junior World Championships, which will be held in Trnava in Slovakia from September 18 to 23. “I will go back and prepare for the trials. Let’s see what happens,” she said.

Bronze for Swati

Apart from Mansi’s silver medal, India won a bronze today while three other Indian girls lost their bronze medal playoff bouts. Swati Sanjay Shinde won the 53kg category bronze by beating Thailand’s Duangnapa Boonyasu 10-0 in the third bout of the evening session.

In the 62kg category, Anshu was tamed by China’s Xinyuan Sun, who won 4-2. Also losing the bronze on Friday was Tina in the 65kg category. She lost 1-8 to Mongolia’s Delgermaa Enkhsaikhan. Sonika Hooda, India’s last medal hopeful of the day, too failed to make an impression as she lost 2-4 to Chinese Taipei’s Hui Tsz Chang.