NEW DELHI: The Sports Authority of India (SAI) Tuesday announced that wrestler Ritu Phogat, the Commonwealth Wrestling Championship gold medal winner in 2016, has been removed from the government’s latest, revised Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS).
The development comes after her recent decision to join Singapore’s Evolve Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) that has effectively ended her wrestling career and it makes her unavailable for India’s 2020 Tokyo Olympics team.
“Wrestler Ritu Phogat who had earlier been inducted into the TOPS scheme, has been excluded from the scheme since she will not be participating in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, on account of her shifting to Singapore to train for Mixed Martial Arts,” the SAI said in a statement.
The SAI also declared that five para-badminton players namely Manoj Sarkar, Pramod Bhagat, Sukant Kadam, Tarun and Suhas Yathiraj have been inducted in the scheme. Two female players, Manasi Joshi and Parul Parmar are on the governing body’s watch list.
For the development group of the 2024 Paris Olympics, six swimmers were named which are Srihari Nataraj (100m and 200m backstroke), Advait Page (800m and 1500m freestyle), Kushagra Rawat (400m and 800m freestyle), Aryan Nehra (1500m freestyle), Kenisha Gupta (50m and 100m freestyle) and Aryan Makhija (800m and 1500m freestyle).
Performances of other swimmers such as Sajan Prakash, Virdhawal Khade, Maana Patel, Neel Roy, Likhit SP, Khushi Dinesh and Lohit M, will be reviewed at the World Championships in September this year.
The governing body also approved financial proposals for the training, competition and equipment of Indian athletes in the TOPS scheme across five sports namely wrestling, shooting, athletics, tennis and weightlifting.
The meeting was chaired by SAI director general Neelam Kapur and attended by IOA President Narinder Batra as well as representatives from various federations.
