New Delhi: Billions of Indians wait with bated breath for the verdict of Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Vinesh Phogat’s appeal for a shared silver after the wrestler was disqualified from the Women’s 50kg Freestyle event for weighing in 100 grams more on the morning of her gold-medal match.
Aman Sehrawat faced similar risk as he was found to be 4.5 kg more than the permissible limit ahead of his bronze-medal bout.
Following his semifinal defeat against top-seeded Japanese Rei Higuchi in the Men’s 57 kg Freestyle event on Thursday, the 21-year-old Aman was 61.5 kg on the scale.
The bronze-medal clash was on Friday night, but the weigh-in was in the morning.
Hence, Aman and his team faced the daunting challenge of shedding 4.5 kg in just 10 hours!
Indian coaches Jagmander Singh and Virender Dahiya, along with nutritionist and other support staff, took on the task of helping Aman lose the extra weight in time for the next weigh-in.
They were desperate to avoid another Vinesh-like heartbreak, in whose case all efforts — including cutting hair – went in vain as she failed by a meagre 100 grams.
Coach Dahiya revealed to PTI how Aman made the cut.
“We kept checking his weight every hour. We didn’t sleep the whole (Thursday) night, not even during the day (Friday),” Dahiya said.
“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.
In the end, Aman went on to beat Puerto Rico’s DT Cruz 13-5 to become India’s youngest Olympic medallist.
It was a fairytale ending for the Olympic debutant, who gave India their sixth medal of the Paris Olympics.
