Aman Sehrawat won the bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Friday. This medal of Aman is the sixth medal for India and the fifth bronze medal of this season. India got its first medal in wrestling this year only due to Aman. The Indian wrestler defeated Darian Cruz of Puerto Rico by a score of 13-5 in the men’s freestyle 57 kg weight category for the bronze medal. This victory also continued India’s streak of winning at least one medal in wrestling at the Olympics since 2008.
However, barely 24 hours before the Olympic medal, there was a sense of nervousness in the Indian camp, as seen earlier this week, which resulted in Vinesh Phogat suffering a string of misfortunes. On Tuesday, Vinesh produced a stellar performance to become the country’s first female wrestler to reach an Olympic final, including a win against world number one and then-defending champion Yui Susaki of Japan in the first bout.
However, by the end of the day, Vinesh had gained more than two kilos. The wrestler stayed up all night jogging and skipping to lose weight. Her team even tried cutting her hair and drawing blood, but the 29-year-old was disqualified from the women’s 50kg freestyle wrestling final on Wednesday morning as she was 100 grams over the limit during the weigh-in for the gold medal against USA’s Sarah Ann Hildebrandt. Based on the rules, Vinesh was not awarded any medal at the Paris Games.
On Friday, Sehrawat weighed 61.5kg, following his semifinal loss against Japan’s Rei Higuchi at 6:30pm on Thursday – exactly 4.5kg more than the permissible limit in men’s 57kg. The Indian camp couldn’t afford another setback and so two senior Indian coaches Jagmander Singh and Virender Dahiya, who were part of the six-member wrestling contingent, took up a ‘mission’ to measure the weight the next morning with 10 hours left on the clock.
How did Aman Sehrawat lose 4.6 kg in 10 hours?
The process began with an hour-and-a-half mat session, during which two senior coaches made him stand up and wrestle. This was followed by an hour-long hot-bath session. 30 minutes after midnight, he went to the gym to run non-stop for an hour on the treadmill. He was then given a 30-minute break, followed by five sessions of 5-minute sauna baths.
At the end of the final session, Sahrawat lost 3.6 kg. He was then given a massage, followed by a session of light jogging and a 15-minute run. By 4:30 am, he weighed 56.9 kg, 100 grams less than the acceptable limit, which made the coach heave a sigh of relief. In between this weight loss session, Sahrawat, who did not sleep after this, was given lukewarm water with lemon and honey and some coffee to drink.
“I watched videos of the wrestling bouts all night. We kept checking her weight every hour. We didn’t sleep all night, not even during the day,” coach Dahiya said. “Cutting weight is a normal thing for us, but because of what happened the previous day (with Vinesh), there was stress, a lot of stress. We couldn’t let another medal slip away.”
