Geeta Phogat Won India's First Women's Wrestling Gold at the Commonwealth Games on 7 October 2010, and Her Sister Babita Won Gold at Glasgow in 2014

Geeta Phogat won the women’s 55 kg freestyle final at the Delhi Commonwealth Games on 7 October 2010, India’s first gold in women’s wrestling. It was also the first Games to offer the sport to women. Commonwealth Sport, the Games’ own organisation, says wrestling had stayed men-only for eighty years before Delhi.

The Tribune’s report from that day says she beat Australia’s Emily Bensted in the final and pinned her in the second round. Her semi-final against Nigeria’s Lovina Edwards had been the harder bout, and of the final she said, “I never expected the finals to be such a one-sided affair.” She dedicated the medal to her father and coach, Mahavir Singh.

Six medals for Indian women in two days

Geeta’s gold was the first of three that India’s women won in freestyle at Delhi. On 8 October Alka Tomar took the 59 kg gold and Anita Kumari another, according to the Tribune. Geeta’s younger sister Babita, entered under the name Babita Kumari, took silver at 51 kg after losing the final 4-7 to Nigeria’s Ifeoma Nwoye.

“I was confident but the opponent was much taller,” Babita told the paper. The Tribune’s tally for India’s women in freestyle was three golds, two silvers and a bronze.

A wrestling hall in Balali

The sisters grew up in Balali, a village in Haryana where their father was the sarpanch (the elected village head) and ran a wrestling hall, an akhara, at his house. Rudraneil Sengupta of Live Mint, in a 2014 profile that United World Wrestling republished, reports that Mahavir Singh Phogat began waking Geeta, then 10, and Babita, then 8, at five in the morning to run. A week later he had built an earth pit and a tin shed over it.

Villagers objected. Four other girls who joined the akhara at the start were pulled out by their parents within a month, and the family met more hostility when the sisters began training with boys. Mahavir told Sengupta that people in the village said he had lost his mind. He says he told the parents who withdrew their daughters that if a woman can become Prime Minister, a sarpanch or a doctor, she can be a wrestler.

From a world medal to the London Olympics

Both sisters won bronze at the 2012 World Championships, Geeta at 55 kg and Babita at 51 kg, according to ESPN’s list of India’s world medals. ESPN records Alka Tomar’s 59 kg bronze in 2006 as the first world medal won by an Indian woman.

In 2012 Geeta also became the first woman from India to qualify for Olympic wrestling, as Sengupta’s profile and ABC News both report. Her 55 kg event in London was held on 9 August 2012. Olympedia, the Olympic historians’ database, shows her losing her second-round bout to Canada’s Tonya Verbeek, who went on to win silver, and her repechage run (the second chance for beaten wrestlers) ending against Ukraine’s Tetiana Lazareva. She finished 13th.

The Press Information Bureau’s list of the Arjuna Awards for 2012, announced on 19 August 2012, includes Geeta Phogat in wrestling. In 2013 she took second place at the Women’s Wrestling World Cup, Sengupta writes.

Babita’s Glasgow gold and the Rio Games

At Glasgow in 2014, Vinesh Phogat, the sisters’ cousin, won the 48 kg gold on 29 July. Two days later, Sengupta reports, Babita won the 55 kg gold while still carrying a ligament injury in her left knee. ESPN also lists her as the 2014 Commonwealth Games gold medallist.

The Government of India gave Babita Kumari the Arjuna Award for 2015, announced on 14 August 2015. The Press Information Bureau says she was abroad for the ceremony on 29 August, so Minister of State Sarbananda Sonowal presented it to her on 29 September.

Three Indian women wrestled at the 2016 Rio Olympics: Vinesh Phogat at 48 kg, Babita at 53 kg and Sakshi Malik at 58 kg. Geeta won the national title in 2017, and ESPN reported in November 2021 that she had taken silver at the National Championships in Gonda, her first medal since that title.

What changed for women’s wrestling

Commonwealth Sport describes Geeta’s win as “a shift in opportunity within a discipline that had been closed to women at the Games for eighty years.” In Balali, Sengupta writes, the celebrations after the 2010 gold lasted ten days. So many girls began arriving to train that Mahavir built them a hostel, where 36 lived in 2014. Their younger sister Ritu Phogat told Sengupta, “Because of Geeta-Babita, we did not face any hurdles.”

ABC News, reporting from Haryana before the Rio Games, says attitudes began to shift after Geeta’s Commonwealth gold and her Olympic qualification. ESPN’s Jonathan Selvaraj wrote in January 2017 that Geeta’s 2010 gold brought women’s wrestling to wider public attention in India.

The starting base was small. Sengupta cites the Wrestling Federation of India’s 2014 register of 337 women wrestlers against 2,999 men, and coach Kripa Shanker, who works with the national women’s team, told him that Haryana was the only state really trying. Sengupta also reports that women and men had received the same international cash awards and government funding since 2006, while the women trained at a Sports Authority of India centre in Lucknow and the men at Sonepat.

On 18 August 2016 Sakshi Malik won the 58 kg bronze at Rio, which ESPN describes as the first Olympic medal by an Indian woman wrestler. Another Indian women’s team sport reached its first world title nine years later, when the cricketers won the 2025 World Cup final on 2 November, as tuput’s account of that match records.

Dangal and where it departs from the record

Dangal was released on 23 December 2016, according to Box Office India. Nitesh Tiwari directed it, Aamir Khan, Kiran Rao and Siddharth Roy Kapur produced it, and Khan is in the cast with Sakshi Tanwar, Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sanya Malhotra. Screen Daily says Aamir Khan Productions and Disney India co-financed it and describes it as based on a true story. Its box office and Khan’s other work are covered in tuput’s piece on Aamir Khan, Lagaan and Dangal in China.

The Tribune checked the film against the people involved. In Dangal, Mahavir is locked in a room before Geeta’s 2010 final. Geeta told the paper that nothing of the kind happened, and the paper cites Mahavir’s biography Akhada in placing him in the stands. She said he was denied an entry pass and kept off the mat after her win. The film also blames a national coach for her weak form before 2010, while the Tribune notes she won Commonwealth Championship golds in 2009 and 2011 under the coach, P. R. Sondhi, on whom the film’s character is based.

Former chief national coach O. P. Yadav told the Tribune that the film took cinematic liberty with its national coach, and that he recognised Mahavir’s efforts and sacrifices in the early years. Geeta said she reached the national camp because of her father’s work and that the camps and coaches contributed to her success.