Kajal Dhochak, 18, on verge of history, reaches final at wrestling Worlds

FILE IMAGE: Kajal Dhochak will take on Anastasia Alpyeyeva in the final of the Wrestling World Championships. | Photo Credit: WRESTLING FEDERATION OF INDIA

On the eve of her debut at the Wrestling World Championships, Kajal Dhochak made a call from Astana, to her family back in India.

It was a big occasion and her uncle Krishan Malik, who has coached her for most of her career, admits he was jittery. This was the biggest tournament of the 18-year-old’s career. But even as he tried to hide his nerves, the voice on the other end of the line was as cheerful as if she only had a routine training session the next day.

“ Aap tension mat lo, belt le ke aa rahi hu! (You don’t worry about anything. I’m coming back with the winner’s belt),” she told him.

Kajal has all but walked her talk. The youngest contender in the women’s 76kg category, she’s one step away from becoming the first Indian woman and only the second overall to win gold at the world championships.

She’s come through a stacked division, beating Asian Champion Enkh Amaryn Davaarnsarn in the quarterfinals and then came back from a 1-7 deficit to beat two time World silver medallist Aiperi Medet Kyzy to reach the final. She faces two time European champion Anastasia Alpyeyeva for a place on the top of the podium.

It’s unlikely she’s going to worry about her opponent’s pedigree though.

“Her best quality as a wrestler is that she has no fear. She doesn’t think who is in front of her. As a coach you always think your wrestler is the best but even when I have doubts, she is full of confidence,” Krishan says.

As far as Krishan can recall, Kajal has always been this way. “She always had a lot of belief in herself,” he says.

Krishan was a former international wrestler for India himself, competing in the heavyweight Greco Roman category. When his career wound down due to injury, he began coaching his nephew – Kajal’s elder brother. He didn’t think then that she would be interested. Indeed, Kajal’s father, a farmer, had only moved his family to Sonepat city, a short way from the national capital of Delhi, from the village of Laath some 20km away since it was felt that it would make it easier for her to study.

But although Kajal was a good student, she decided as an 11-year-old she, too, wanted to wrestle.

“Every time I took her brother out for practise, Kajal would start crying. She kept saying she also wanted to come and wrestle. I told her that wrestling is something that girls didn’t do. But she would cry and tell me that she still wanted to wrestle and that she could do it. Finally I let her come with me,” he recalls.

Krishan says he thought that initial enthusiasm would fade away. But that never happened. “I never had to force her to wrestle,” he says.

For the first few years, her training wasn’t particularly strenuous. She was studying and only trained a few days a week. She didn’t go to an academy but exercised on a makeshift mitti (sand) pit her uncle had made in a plot of land he owned. Back then wrestling was mostly a fun activity. Even Kajal’s mother Babita, started to learn the sport. “I wanted her to train as a wrestler simply so she could understand what it was that her daughter was doing. But she ended up even competing in a state level competition,” Krishan recalls.

Kajal with her uncle, Krishan Malik, left, and her mother, Babita, right. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

But it was Kajal who progressed far further than anyone expected. “When she was small and had just started wrestling, she would say ‘one day I’m going to win an Olympic medal’,” says Babita. “At that time there was no real expectation that she would reach where she has. But at her very first tournament she won a gold medal at the Haryana State Championships. That’s when I thought that maybe something big is written in her destiny.”

These days Kajal trains with former national coach Kuldeep Malik in Sonepat and has since progressed rapidly from the state, to national and then international levels. She competed and won gold at the U-15 Asian Championships in 2022, then followed up with the U-17 title the next year. In 2024, she won the world U-17 title. In the last two years, she won successive golds at the Junior Worlds.

She also made her senior debut at the Asian Championships, but although she lost her opening bout – a narrow 5-3 defeat to Kazakhstan’s Gulmaral Yekerbayeva, she’s only improved ever since.

But the competitive streak in her meant that setback rankled her as much as every loss does. “She absolutely hates losing. Even as a child she would try to compete with everyone. If someone did an exercise in a certain amount of time, she had to beat it somehow. It doesn’t matter to her if she’s competing with a senior and she’s still not reached that same age. She always thinks she can win,” according to Babita.

That confidence has been reinforced with every tournament and win.

The 76kg women’s freestyle category has become one of India’s most competitive field and Kajal has slowly cemented her hold on it. At the start of the year, Kajal beat two time junior world champion Priya Malik to earn a place at the Asian Championships. Although she lost out to the same wrestler in the selection trials for the Asian Games, she bounced back by claiming a spot in the Indian team. A week ago, she would also beat Reetika Hooda, a silver medallist at the 2024 Asian Championships, at an informal dangal competition.

But the worlds are a massive step up in quality and it’s in that rarefied environment that Kajal has shown she belongs.

“It’s very strange because someone like me knows just how big the World Championships are. I know how tough the competition is. But Kajal doesn’t seem to realise it. Maybe it’s just that she’s so young but when I was talking to her about the competition a few days ago, she was laughing about it,” he says.

This doesn’t mean that Kajal hasn’t been tested. After pinning Lithuania’s Kamile Gaucaite in her opening round and trouncing Mongolia’s Asian Champion Enkh Amaryn Davaarnsarn 9-2 in the quarter finals, the Indian was thrown and nearly pinned herself by Kyzy in the semifinal. Down 1-7 early in the match, she eventually fought back, scoring four unanswered take downs to turn the match around.

That lack of intimidation may yet serve her well in the final. For Kajal, the World Championships are not the ultimate destination but another step towards a much bigger ambition.

“The world championships is one of the biggest platforms for a wrestler but Kajal is already thinking beyond it. Her dream is to win a medal at the 2028 Olympics. From the time she started wrestling she would tell us that her goal was to do that. The world championships are just one step towards that goal,” Krishan says.

Whatever happens in the final, Kajal has already announced herself as a wrestler to watch over the coming years.

“She’s already believed that she belonged at this level. Now others know it as well,” he says.