Antim Panghal pins past Olympic disappointment, sets sights on Asian Championship glory

Wrestling might be a hard sport, but Antim Panghal had a big smile on her face at the end of her competition at the selection trials to pick India’s team for the 2025 Senior Asian Wrestling Championships held at New Delhi’s KD Jadhav Indoor Stadium on Saturday. While the rest of the competition would go on until late evening, Antim’s competition – that started at 10am concluded just a few minutes past midday.

The 20-year-old was not tested, not even needing to go six minutes in either bout as she pinned both her opponents – Swati Shinde of Maharashtra and then Hinaben of Gujarat in the women’s 53kg category.

The Asian Championships – to be held in Jordan from March 25 are expected to be a tougher challenge. But it’s also a competition, Antim is looking forward to.

She says, it’s time to start setting things right from what had been a disastrous 2024 season.

“Last year wasn’t at all good for me. I really hope 2026 and 2028 will be a lot better. And I want to start things well at the Asian Championships,” she told Sportstar after her final bout of the day.

2024 should have been anything but as horrible as it eventually turned out to be. Antim was among India’s most promising athletes at the start of the year. She had been the first Indian woman to win gold at the Junior World championships in 2022, and she also won gold at the U-23 World championships and a senior world bronze in 2023. She also has a silver from the 2023 Asian Championships – the only previous time she took part at the continental tournament.

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Antim went in as one of India’s medal favorites in Paris but her tournament ended in failure. She struggled to make weight in the women’s 53kg category, then lost in the very first round. There was trouble out of the mat as well that culminated in Antim being evicted from the Games village and packed off back home to India.

“I did compete at Paris but the experience wasn’t a good one. I competed for the first time at the Olympics. I didn’t have any idea what it was going to be like. I thought it would be something like the World championships where I had won a bronze but it was nothing like that. It was completely different,” she says.

It didn’t help, she admits, that she was carrying a back injury going into the competition. “I was performing well in the 2023 season but my performance started going down because of an injury to my back before I went to Paris. I was in a lot of pain. I did rehab but I didn’t have time to treat my injury properly before the Olympics.” she says.

As her Olympic debut ended in tragedy, the then 20-year-old admits she was devastated. “I know I made a lot of mistakes because I just didn’t know what to expect from an Olympic games. I know that I’ll prepare a lot better at my next competition. I hope that my performance will be better next time around,” she says.

Learning experience

In hindsight Antim says she can see the silver lining in her performance. “Perhaps if I had won a medal, perhaps I would have been happier. But I wouldn’t have learned as much as I did. I think what I learned the most is who I need to keep by my side. I learned after what happened in Paris, whom I can trust and who I can’t. I know I can trust my parents, my brothers and sisters and my physios. When people were criticizing me and saying I did so badly, they reminded me I had an injury. They also told me I was just 19 years old. I had more chances to do better. I still have many more chances. That kept me motivated,” she says.

In the time she got after the Olympics, Antim says she’s worked on fixing her injuries. “I completed all my rehab work. Its only now that I am focusing on competition,” she says.

Even that hasn’t been easy. Owing to the long conflict between the Wrestling Federation of India and the Indian Sports Ministry that de-recognised it in December 2023, athletes have found themselves unable to compete in international tournaments. Antim too ended up having to meet the sports minister after no Indian team was sent for the UWW (United World Wrestling) ranking series in Croatia and Albania in February this year.

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“After the Olympics I haven’t competed in any international competition,” she says. “It does make a difference. If we keep playing competitions, we get to know where we stand. When we don’t, we only know that we are working hard but we don’t know what that means on the mat,” she says. “When the federation was banned, we couldn’t go for any international competition and nothing was happening in India as well. I will say that where we are now is a good situation. It’s beneficial for everyone. We have suffered because we couldn’t go for any ranking tournaments. At least now we have started the season,” she says.

The Asian Championships are hopefully just the start for Antim. “After the Asian Championships I hope I can get more competition. We have the U-23 world championships and also the senior worlds. I want to compete in all of these events,” she says.

Her immediate focus though will be the Asian Championships. And even though she’s had an extended break from international competition, Antim has her sights set high. “The last time I competed at the Asian Championships I won a silver medal. My goal this time is to do better. I want to win the gold. It’s not that I just want to get on the mat. I want to try and win gold,” she says.