New Delhi. While Vinesh Phogat was disqualified from the final of the women’s 50 kg wrestling competition for being just 100 grams overweight, in the men’s 57 kg weight category, Aman Sehrawat succeeded in winning the bronze medal by losing 4.5 kg in 10 hours. After losing in the semi-finals on Thursday, Aman Sehrawat weighed 61.5 kg. Which was exactly 4.5 kg more than the acceptable limit in men’s 57 kg. But in the next 10 hours, he worked tirelessly with his Indian coaches and lost 4.6 kg.
The two senior Indian coaches Jagmander Singh and Virender Dahiya, who are part of the six-member wrestling contingent, now had only one mission. They could not afford another setback after what happened to Vinesh Phogat, who is now fighting a legal battle against her disqualification from the women’s 50kg final for being 100 grams overweight in the second day’s weigh-in. Notably, Aman, just 21 years old, lost the semifinal against Japan’s Rei Higuchi at around 6.30 pm. But the Indian contingent had no time to waste.
Aman sweated continuously for 10 hours
The ‘mission’ began with an hour-and-a-half mat session in which two senior coaches made him stand up and wrestle. This was followed by an hour-long hot bath session. At 12.30 am, they went to the gym where Aman ran on the treadmill for an hour without stopping. The sweating helped in losing weight. Then he was given a 30-minute break, followed by five sessions of 5-minute sauna baths. By the end of the last session, Aman’s weight was still 900 grams more. Then he was given a massage and the coaches asked the Chhatrasal trainee to do some light jogging. This was followed by five 15-minute running sessions. By 4.30 am, Aman’s weight was 56.9 kg, 100 grams less than the set weight. After this, the coaches and the wrestler heaved a sigh of relief.
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hard work paid off
In between these sessions, Aman was given lukewarm water with lemon and honey and a little coffee to drink. After that Aman could not sleep. Coach Dahiya said that ‘I watched videos of wrestling matches all night. We kept checking his weight every hour. We did not sleep all night, not even during the day.’ Dahiya said that ‘losing weight is a normal thing for us, but due to what happened with Vinesh the previous day, there was stress, a lot of stress. We could not lose another medal.’ All the hard work paid off when Aman won the bronze medal by defeating Puerto Rico’s Darian Cruz on Friday and became India’s youngest Olympic medalist.
Tags: 2024 paris olympics, olympics in paris, paris olympics 2024, Vinesh Phogat
FIRST PUBLISHED : August 10, 2024, 09:50 IST
