Meet the 18-year-old who challenged Vinesh Phogat in the CWG 2022 trials. Antim Panghal is now the current junior world champion in wrestling's 53kg class.
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On August 19, 2022, Antim Panghal became the first-ever Indian woman wrestler to win a Gold medal at the World U20 Wrestling Championships. The 18-year-old got the better of Atlyn Shagayeva of Kazakhstan by 8-0 in the finals of the 2022 edition of the championships. The reigning Junior Asian Champion entered the finals with a dominating victory over Nataliia Klivchutska of Ukraine by 11-2. Earlier, she defeated Japanese wrestler Ayaka Kimura by fall to advance to the semi-final.
Antim’s parents always wanted a boy in the family. In 2004, the family was blessed with a baby girl who was also their fourth daughter. They decided to keep her name as Antim according to a tradition followed in many villages in Haryana. This is usually done to not have another girl child. Two years later, the couple was blessed with a boy but they always treated Antim like their first child. Antim’s father Ramniwas always wished for Antim to become a sports person. He saw Antim trying her hands at wrestling at the local akhada in the Baghana village near Hisar and sent her to the Baba Lal Das Wrestling Academy. This implied that the family had to shift to Hisar and rent a house. Ramniwas struggled with paying the house rent but did every possible thing to see his daughter turn into a successful wrestler.
Ramniwas’s sacrifices paid off as Antim achieved her first national title in U15 girls’ 49kg in Patna. She went on to win the bronze medal at the U-15 Asian Wrestling Championship in Japan. The progress of the wrestler was evident as she kept on winning the U-17 national championships in 2019 and 2020. At the World Cadet Wrestling Championships held in Budapest, she grabbed the bronze by defeating Turkey’s Tuba Amir.
However, the incident which received everyone’s attention was Antim reaching the finals of the trials for the Commonwealth Games 2022. She then gave a terrible scare to the World Championship medallist Vinesh Phogat in the finals. Initially, Antim was on the verge of winning with a 3-0 lead initially but Vinesh made a great comeback to get the game in her favor. But, this game showed glimpses of what she is capable of, making her one among the wrestlers to watch out for.
