The Indian wrestling contingent consists of a 10-memeber team. Men’s freestyle wrestlers included Sumit Malik (125kg), Satyawart Kadian (97kg) and Amit Dhankar (74kg) while the women’s category of Pooja (76kg), Nisha (68kg) and Seema (50kg) were stopped on Tuesday night from taking off to Sofia, Bulgaria for the final Olympic qualification tournament that was scheduled from May 6 to May 9 as the Netherlands government levied a travel ban on the Indian nationals flying to their country at it’s aggravating COVID-19 situation.
Deepanshu (97kg), Greco Roman specialist and Jagminder Singh, men’s freestyle coach were part of the contingent apart from the freestyle wrestlers.
The team was poised to fly from Delhi to Amsterdam, from where they were supposed to take a connecting flight to Sofia. KIM Airlines informed the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and cancelled their tickets. However, Air France flight has arranged a separate wrestling contingent of 17- members who will travel from Delhi to Sofia on Wednesday morning via Mumbai and Paris.
Meanwhile, WFI has been in talks with the Airlines to accommodate the other group on the same Air France flight for April 30 or May 1 taking the same Mumbai-Paris route.
