WFI seeks foreign coaches for India’s Asian Games build-up
India's Wrestling Federation plans to hire foreign coaches for freestyle, Greco-Roman, and women's wrestling to prepare teams for the 2026 Asian Games.
New Delhi: India’s wrestling fortunes have largely been shaped by homegrown coaches in the last few years. However, the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) has now decided to bring in foreign coaches across all the disciplines – freestyle, Greco-Roman and women’s wrestling.
WFI has begun inviting applications from international coaches and many have shown interest. The foreign coaches will be responsible for preparing the national teams for the 2026 Asian Games in Japan. They will design and implement high-performance training programmes for elite athletes, according to WFI officials.
“The foreign coaches will initially get contracts up to 2026 Asian Games and based on the performance it can be extended till the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics,” a WFI official told HT.
“We have got a few CVs. The last date to apply is Nov 15. We are looking to get the best coaches for the three national teams. If we can get experts from Iran (freestyle), Japan (women) and Russia, nothing like it. We want the teams to prepare well for the Asian Games and then LA Olympics. There will be regular national camps.”
While some of India’s top wrestlers like Bajrang Punia, Ravi Dahiya and Vinesh Phogat have trained under foreign coaches, hiring them as personal coaches sponsored by WFI, Sports Authority of India (SAI) or private organisations, the national set-up hasn’t had a foreign coach since the Covid phase.
Andrew Cook of USA was appointed the women’s team coach in 2019 but his tenure was cut short during Covid. Iran’s Hossein Karimi trained the freestyle team briefly in 2019. Georgia’s Vladimir Mestvirishvili was the longest serving foreign coach in India and was instrumental in shaping Olympic medallists Sushil Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt and Bajrang.
Top wrestlers, including Deepak Punia and Sujeet Kalkal, had stints under Russian coach Kamal Malikov before the Paris Olympics qualification tournaments. Malikov is highly rated by Indian wrestlers as he trained Dahiya before his 2021 Tokyo Olympics silver medal. Tokyo Olympics bronze winner and multiple world championships medallist Bajrang Punia got impressive results under Georgian Emzarios Bentinidis as personal coach.
One of the reasons WFI wants to hire foreign coaches is to ensure that all wrestlers train together at the national camp, starting January. In the last Olympics cycle, there was a trend of wrestlers training individually overseas with personal coaches and physios. Dagestan, Russia emerged as the favourite destination for men, while Japan was popular with women wrestlers. In freestyle, Aman Sehrawat was the only wrestler who qualified for Paris, going on to win bronze.
“It is difficult to track the progress of wrestlers when they are training individually at different locations. The foreign coaches will be finalised in the next two months so that they are part of the Asian Games preparation camp that starts in January,” said an official.
