Face Off With Ace Wrestlers Geeta And Babita Phogat

As two of the top wrestlers in India, sisters Geeta and Babita Phogat know how to fight the good fight. They talk to Nikita Sawant about taking the hard knocks and rolling with the punches.

- Nikita Sawant

Femina’s shoot with the Phogat sisters was nothing short of extraordinary. Geeta, 28, and Babita, 27, are built powerfully, like the elite athletes they are and we wanted to style them in a way that would complement their world-class form. Our stylists put together cute dresses, cocktail gowns and high heels for the sisters to have fun with—the result was a couple of gorgeous girls, giggling away and posing like supermodels for the camera. The best thing about Geeta and Babita is that for all their success, they have their feet firmly planted on the ground. This comes through in our conversation that explored their journey to the akhada, recently immortalised in the Hindi film Dangal, and what it took to stay in the ring.

How did wrestling come into your life?

Geeta: Our father and grandfather were both wrestlers. But when my father was young, our family didn’t have the finances that he required to continue wrestling. He would always think that when he had a son, he would train him to do what he couldn’t do himself. Then he had four daughters—but he didn’t let go of his dream. I was 12 or 13 years old when I started training under him.

Babita: We used to see our father go running in the mornings. One day, Geeta told him that she’d like to go along, too. After a few days of enthusiasm and waking up at 4 am, she got tired but our father became determined to train us. He started waking all of us up at 4. Over the next few days, our legs hurt so badly that we couldn’t even sit or stand (laughs). After that, we stopped going for a couple of days, which our father didn’t take very well. Then in 2000, when Karnam Malleswari won the bronze medal in weight-lifting at the Olympics— we all watched it on TV as it happened—our father decided to train all of us in wrestling.