Aman Sehrawat weighed 61.5kg after his semifinal defeat on Thursday — exactly 4.5 kilograms more than the permissible limit in the men’s 57kg — but in the next 10 hours, he worked tirelessly with his Indian coaches to lose 4.6kg. Jagmander Singh and Virender Dahiya, the two senior Indian coaches attached to the six-member wrestling contingent, now had a ‘mission’. They could not afford another jolt after what happened with Vinesh Phogat, who is now fighting a legal battle against her disqualification from the women’s 50kg final for being overweight by 100g in the second-day weigh-in.
The 21-year-old Aman lost the semifinal against Japan’s Rei Higuchi around 6:30 pm.
There was no time to waste.
The ‘mission’ began with a one-and-a-half-hour mat session during which the two senior coaches engaged him in standing wrestling and it was followed by a one-hour hot-bath session.
At 12:30 they hit the gym, where Aman had a non-stop one-hour run on the treadmill.
The sweating would help in cutting weight. He was then given a 30-minute break, followed by five sessions of 5-minute sauna bath.
By the end of the last session, Aman was still weighing 900g more. He was given a massage and then the coaches asked the Chhatarsal trainee to do light jogging.
It was followed by five 15-minute running sessions. By 4:30am, Aman was weighing 56.9kg — 100g less. The coaches and the wrestler heaved a sigh of relief.
In between these sessions, Aman was given lukewarm water with lemon and honey and a bit of coffee to drink.
Aman would not sleep after that.
“I watched videos of wrestling bouts, the whole night.” “We kept checking his weight every hour. We didn’t sleep the whole night, not even during the day,” said coach Dahiya.
“Weight cutting is routine, normal for us but there was tension, a lot of tension due to what happened the other day (with Vinesh). We could not let slip another medal,” said Dahiya.
All the hard work came to a fruition when Aman won the bronze medal, beating Puerto Rico’s Darian Cruz on Friday to become India’s youngest ever Olympic medalist.
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