Pooja Gehlot

Some Lesser Known Facts About Pooja Gehlot

• Pooja Gehlot is an Indian freestyle wrestler.

• She grew up in Narela, New Delhi, India.

  

• Since childhood, she was interested in wrestling, and she started learning the basics of wrestling at the age of 6. In childhood, she would often accompany her paternal uncle Dharamvir Singh, a wrestler, to various wrestling matches.

• According to Pooja, her father did not want her to pursue wrestling as a career due to which she started playing Volleyball, which she played at the national level.

  

• The success of Geeta Phogat and Babita Phogat at the 2010 Commonwealth Games inspired Pooja, and she decided to follow in their footsteps.

• In 2016, she won a gold medal at the Junior Wrestling Championships held in Ranchi in the 48 kg category. In the same year, she got injured while practicing wrestling moves following which she could not practice wrestling for one year.

• In 2018, she won the title of Bharat Kesari at a freestyle wrestling competition organised by the Haryana Sports and Youth Affairs department to commemorate the martyrdom day of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev, she also won Rs. 10 lakh.

  

• In 2017, she won a gold medal in the 51 kg category at the Asian Junior Championships held in Taiwan.

  

• In 2019, she became the second Indian woman to win a silver medal in the 51 kg category at the World Wrestling Championship held in Budapest, Hungary; Geeta Phogat was the first Indian woman to win a medal, Silver, at the World Wrestling Championship in 2017.

  

• In an interview, Pooja talked about her strengths and said that her upper-body strength gives her an advantage that came from training with boys. She said,
  

  Initially, when I knew that I had to train with boys I was reluctant. But I wanted to be a wrestler and my father always motivated me to not think about such things. Training with Greco-Roman wrestlers helped make by defence rock-solid.”

• She has endorsed a health supplement brand, Guardian GNC.