Seema Bisla

Some Lesser Known Facts About Seema Bisla

• Seema Bisla is an Indian freestyle wrestler who is known for winning a bronze medal at the 2021 Asian Wrestling Championships. She also won a gold medal during the 2021 World Wrestling Olympic Qualification Tournaments series and took a seat at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

• Seema Bisla belongs to a family of wrestlers as her father and uncle were professional wrestlers who competed in several local and state-level tournaments. Seema began her coaching at an early age and started participating in wrestling competitions in 2007.

• In 2008, she participated in the Junior Asian Championship and won a bronze medal for the country. She then won bronze medals in the Asian Junior Championships for two years in a row i.e. 2012 and 2013.

• Seema faced problems while participating in senior-level tournaments as she could not financially support her training, and her diet was also very basic compared to that of other athletes. Her father was diagnosed with cancer, and she decided to apply for a sports vacancy in the Indian Railways and got a clerks job in 2017.

• She applied for the job with the help of a former wrestler and her coach, Paramjeet Yadav, and she asked him to train her for the competitions. Seema shifted to Paramjeet’s training camp first in Gurugram and then in Farrukh Nagar.

  

• Seema suffered an injury in her neck in the early days of her wrestling career, and she was asked to reduce her weight category for fighting. Earlier, she was fighting in the 67 kg category, but she moved down to 58 kg and then 55 kg. Due to this uncertainty in the weight class, she couldn’t compete in several senior tournaments.

• In 2018, the United World Wrestling made some changes in the rules. Where earlier the wrestler would be weighed a day before the wrestling, but the new rule allowed the weigh-in to take place on the morning of the competition. This allowed Vinesh Phogat to step up to the 53 kg category and Seema began competing in the 50 kg category.

• In 2019, she competed at the Ranking Series tournament in Italy and earned a gold medal. In the same year, she won another gold medal at the Ranking Series tournament in Turkey.

  

• In 2021, Seema won a bronze medal at the 2021 Asian Wrestling Championships and went ahead to attend the World Olympic Qualification Tournament, where she won a gold medal and booked a berth for herself in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

  

• In an interview, her coach Paramjeet, talked about Seema and her family and said-
  

  She would just take the milk and homemade food. How she would have competed with stronger rivals. She came from a humble family, which could not afford the required, yet expensive, diet for this sport. Now that she had a job to support her, I suggested adding supplements, dry-fruits and multi-vitamins to her diet and her game started to change.”

• Seema does not have a contract with the Wrestling Federation of India, and she also has no sponsorships yet. She has been taking care of all her expenses on her own.

• In August 2021, Seema Bisla wrestled with Turkey’s Sarra Hamdi and lost the match in the first round of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She lost the opening round with a 1-3 score and had to let go of her dream of winning a medal in the Olympics. Back in her village, her family members were disappointed with her performance, but her father said that it’s a game and there could be only one winner. They were happy to see her at the Olympics grounds.