When Sandeep Tulsi Yadav clinched the historic Greco-Roman bronze for India at the Wrestling World Championships, the 25-year-old would have hoped that the unhygenic conditions at his training centre, SAI's Kandivli complex in Mumbai, would change for the better.
But despite Sandeep's heroics at Budapest last month and having 2010 Commonwealth Games gold medallist and London Olympian Narsingh Pancham Yadav as his roommate, nothing has changed for him and other wrestlers as they struggle for basic facilities and the indifferent attitude of the government officials.
The hostel building has 27 rooms and houses wrestlers, hockey and kabaddi players of national and international repute. But the centre lacks basic sanitation facilities.
Each room is occupied by two or three athletes with cracks appearing in the wall. Adding to their misery, the six Indian-style toilets are shared by over 50 athletes with no taps.
The building has makeshift bathrooms, leaving the athletes with no other option but to take their bath under taps in the open.
"It's a very old building which needs urgent renovation. There is a proposal pending before the state government to demolish the structure and construct a new one with all essential facilities," a coach, working at the Kandivli complex, told PTI over phone.
