Aman Sehrawat weighed 61.5 kg on Thursday which he needed to reduce by 4.5 kg within 10 hours. Ironically, not only did he manage to shed the extra 4.5 kg but also he was just 100 grams below the critical limit, contrasting with Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification due to her being 100 grams over the limit.
After his semi-final defeat to the eventual champion Rei Higuchi, the scales showed 61.5 kg on Thursday. Aman, India’s youngest Olympic bronze medal-winning wrestler, needed to reduce his weight by 4.5 kilograms within a tight 10-hour window to qualify for the 57 kg weight class for the bronze medal match.
By the next morning, Aman, along with his coaches Jagmander Singh and Virender Dahiya, had successfully trimmed his weight by 4.6 kilograms, weighing in at 56.9 kg, just 100 grams below the critical limit. For Aman, this was a relief, contrasting with the disappointment experienced by Vinesh Phogat, for whom being just 100 grams over had been a setback.
Following his semi-final loss to Japan’s Rei Higuchi around 6:30 pm on Thursday, Aman and his team wasted no time. Their weight-cutting “mission” began with a one-and-a-half-hour mat session involving intense standing wrestling, followed by a one-hour hot bath.
At 12:30 am, they moved to the gym for a continuous one-hour run on the treadmill to aid in weight loss. After a 30-minute break, Aman underwent five sessions of five-minute sauna baths. Despite these efforts, he was still 900 grams over the limit by the end of the last sauna session.
To address this, Aman received a massage and then engaged in light jogging. This was followed by five 15-minute running sessions. By 4:30 am, he had reached 56.9 kg, just 100 grams below the limit, which brought a sense of relief to the team.
Throughout the night, Aman drank lukewarm water with lemon, honey, and a bit of coffee. He stayed awake, watching wrestling videos to pass the time. Coach Dahiya noted, “We kept checking his weight every hour. We didn’t sleep the whole night, not even during the day.”
Dahiya also mentioned the heightened tension due to the previous day’s events with Vinesh Phogat, saying, “Weight cutting is routine, normal for us but there was tension, a lot of tension due to what happened the other day. We could not let slip another medal.”
All the hard work paid off when Aman won the bronze medal on Friday by defeating Puerto Rico’s Darian Cruz, making him India’s youngest ever Olympic medallist.
