Sushil Kumar

The gold winning champion, Sushil Kumar has been opted out of the Asian Games. The neck and shoulder injury has made him to take this heartbreaking decision. Indian wrestling’s team management

Sushil confirmed that he had fought with some distress during the World Championship last month and the Commonwealth Games here.

“The injury has been troubling me for the last six months,” said Sushil, who has been rested for the November 12-27 event. “The Wrestling Federation (WFI) and my coaches asked me to take rest because if the injury flares up it will affect my preparation for the London Olympics in 2012,” added Sushil, who had his injured right shoulder taped during the gold-medal winning performance at the CWG.

Pardeep Kumar, who is the India No. 2 in 66kg category, will replace Sushil in Guangzhou.

National coach Jagmender Singh told TOI that the injury will heal in 15 to 20 days. However, it has been learnt that Sushil had also complained about his fingers getting numb during training, which could be an indication that the neck pain may be because of an injury to the spine. Such an injury could be career-threatening.

Indian team physio Arvinder Pal Singh insisted Sushil’s injury is muscular and has nothing to with the spine. “It is due to over-exertion. We had done tests including MRI scans and Sushil has a muscular strain on the neck and shoulders,” he said.

“Sushil took part in three back-to-back tournaments – the Asian championships, World championships and CWG. It is bound to take a toll,” said Arvinder. “He had slight pain in the right shoulder during the build-up to the World Championship and after Moscow we treated him and prepared him for the CWG as it was significant for him to vie at home.

“But we don’t want to take chances any more. Sushil had pain during the session at the CWG and he also complained about knee pain. So we decided to give him rest and let him recover fully from the small niggles and prevent it from becoming big,” the physio added. “We don’t want to repeat the mistake we did with Yogeshwar (Dutt).” Yogeshwar suffered a career-threatening knee injury one and a half years back which got aggravated after he trained and competed with it.

Tags: Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, Sushil Kumar, WFI, World Championship, Wrestling