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Amar Dhesi, Jasneet Nijjar to represent Canada in Paris
Without the Punjabi Diaspora, no Canadian contingent has been complete.
(l)Amar Dhesi (R) Jasneet Nijjar / Instagram, Washington State University
Two sports stars of Punjabi Diaspora – wrestler Amar Dhesi and athlete Jasneet Nijjar – have been chosen to represent Canada in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games starting on July 26. While it will be the second Olympic Games for Amar Dhesi, Jasneet will be making her debut in the prestigious quadrangular event.
Without the Punjabi Diaspora, no Canadian contingent has been complete. Both Amar Dhesi and Jasneet Nijjar come from Surrey. Field hockey, wrestling, badminton, and water polo are the sports in which Indo-Canadians have done well.
Amar Dhesi made his Olympic debut in Tokyo 2020. He finished 13th in the men’s 125kg freestyle event. He secured his return ticket to the Olympic Games by being in the top two in his weight class at the 2024 Pan American Olympic Qualifier. He won his final match by superiority 11-0 over his opponent from Cuba.
After his international absence in 2023, Dhesi won the Canadian Team Trials in December 2023. Four years earlier, he had taken the first step towards qualifying for his first Olympic Games by defeating Rio 2016 Olympian Korey Jarvis in dominant fashion at the national trials.
Just ahead of the Pan Am Qualifier for Tokyo 2020, Dhesi won 125kg silver at the 2020 Pan American Championships. As part of his preparations for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Dhesi won gold at the Matteo Pellicone Tournament in March 2021.
Dhesi had one of the best years of his career in 2022. He won his first senior gold medal at the Pan American Championships and then captured 125kg gold at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. He finished off the season with a fifth-place finish at the world championships after advancing through the repechage to wrestle in a bronze medal match.
Before his Olympic dream became a reality, Dhesi endured three ACL tears in six years and underwent two reconstructive surgeries, which caused him to miss two seasons of competition for Oregon State University. He had his best college season in 2018 when he won the second of his three Pac-12 titles and finished third at the NCAA Division I Championships, resulting in him being named Oregon State Male Athlete of the Year. He finished his collegiate career as a three-time All-American.
Dhesi made his first splash on the international scene when he won 120kg gold at the 2014 World Junior Championships. He competed at his first senior world in 2018.
Though it often makes people laugh, Dhesi still identifies his gold medal from the provincial championships in grade nine as one of his proudest moments because it was the first time he realized he could be good at wrestling, making it the starting point of his career.
His father Balbir was an elite wrestler in India before immigrating to Canada and starting the Khalsa Wrestling Club for Youth in Surrey in 1976. He attended practice with his dad and older brother Parm, who competed in the 2010 Youth Olympic Games. Amar started training when he was 5-6 but mostly just ran around before entering his first competition a few years later. A graduate of Oregon State University with a degree in sociology, he works as a police officer in the Vancouver Police Department and enjoys playing tennis and watching movies.
Amar Dhesi and Jasneet Nijjar are among 338 athletes named to the Canadian Olympic team – including 316 accredited athletes and 22 accredited alternate athletes – along with 369 National Sport Organization (NSO) support staff and coaches.
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