Click to play videoNew Delhi: Over 1 billion Indians are pinning their Olympic hopes on just three wrestlers but these gladiators for now are struggling for attention and money to survive in this competitive age.
Even though the ancient sport is quite popular in the country's northern areas of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh but now it is slowly fading out.
"Wrestlers do not get any regular job or employment and at the end of the day. You do want to secure your future. If someone fails to make it big then he has no future, no hope in this sport. Mud wrestling is more popular because there is money in it," Kamaljit Singh, a wrestler, says.
However there's one man from a different school of thought. He blames the myopic vision of sportsmen in India for the lack of success at major global sporting events.
"Our thinking is limited. All that we are concerned about is how to earn enough money to feed our stomachs and keep our jobs. The day we start thinking big, start thinking of the nation instead of petty things like feeding our stomachs, that day we will start winning medals," says Kartar Singh, gold medallist in Asian Games and Secretary General of the Wrestling Federation of India.
Three coaches have also been come from Georgia to train the Olympic hopefuls.
And this time around the Indian freestyle wrestlers are hopeful of bringing some cheer to the faces of their billion countrymen.
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