Thirteen wrestlers have been suspended by the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) for regularly skipping training sessions meant for the 2016 Rio Olympics qualifiers.
Apart from the 13 grapplers, three coaches have also been sacked by the federation for numerous reasons, including non performance. Chief national men's freestyle coach Vinod Kumar, assistant men's freestyle coach Rajneesh and women's team coach Ramani Chanu got the axe.
WFI had organised special exchange programme, where Indian athletes were supposed to train with the foreign grapplers, but the wrestlers skipped the event giving lame excuses.
"As many as 13 wrestlers have been suspended as they were often found making excuses of suffering from an injury to skip training," a source in WFI said.
The decision to suspend the wrestlers and the coaches was taken by WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who paid a surprise visit to the Sports Authority of India's (SAI) Centre in Sonepat on Thursday.
"We had some information about a few wrestlers not coming to practice and not listening to the coaches. So I went to the SAI Centre in Sonepat and met the wrestlers, the coaches and also inspected other things. And thereafter, I decided to take some strict action. I decided to throw as many as 14 wrestlers out of the camp," said the WFI chief.
Brij Bhushan clarified that Olympic medallists like Sushil Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt were not among those suspended.
"Wrestlers like Sushil, Yogeshwar, Bajrang, Amit Kumar are not like this. They are extremely disciplined. I can say there are not too big names but country has expectations from all those who come to train here and this kind of a behaviour is not acceptable," insisted Brij Bhushan.
Among the suspended wrestlers, Joginder Singh, who won the silver medal at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games in men's 120kg Freestyle category.
Initially 14 wrestlers were suspended, but after it was found that one was actually suffering from a genuine injury, his name was removed from the list.
"One wrestler was found to be genuinely suffering from an injury. So he has been sent for tests and other 13 have been handed suspension," the source said.
Of the 13 suspended, 11 are Greco-Roman wrestlers and two are Freestyle grapplers — one male and one female.
"Greco-Roman wrestling is as it is India's weak point. Thus, the WFI President thought there was no point continuing with those who are not sincere. He felt it was better to bring in youngsters who are expected to train sincerely."
According to the source, the chief coach was sacked primarily for not lodging protest with the Doha Asian Championship's technical judges against poor umpiring. "Despite our freestyle wrestlers doing well at the Asian championship, they lost quite a few bouts because of poor umpiring. And the coach kept quiet and did not register any protest," he said.