To achieve one thing, Aman Sehrawat firstly wanted to lose one thing. When the scales of the weighing balance confirmed 61.5 kg on Thursday after his semi-final defeat to eventual champion Rei Higuchi, Aman had a much bigger job at hand earlier than taking the mat for the bronze medal play-off. India’s youngest Olympic bronze medal profitable grappler needed to shed 4.5 kilograms of body weight in a stipulated time of 10 hours earlier than obligatory second day weigh-in to qualify for the 57 kg bout.
By the point Aman was up on the weighing balance on second morning, he alongside together with his coaches Jagmander Singh and Virender Dahiya had achieved the mission — lowered 4.6 kgs to be eligible for the combat at 56.9 kg.
It was case being precisely 100 gram lower than crucial restrict. If 100 gram turned tragedy for Vinesh Phogat, it was a case of reduction for Aman.
On Thursday, Aman had misplaced his semifinal bout in opposition to Japan’s Rei Higuchi round 6:30 pm.
There was no time to waste.
The ‘mission’ started with a one-and-a-half-hour mat session throughout which the 2 senior coaches engaged him in standing wrestling and it was adopted by a one-hour hot-bath session.
At 12:30 they hit the health club, the place Aman had a continuous one-hour run on the treadmill.
The sweating would assist in slicing weight. He was then given a 30-minute break, adopted by 5 classes of 5-minute sauna tub.
By the tip of the final session, Aman was nonetheless weighing 900g extra. He was given a therapeutic massage after which the coaches requested the Chhtrasal trainee to do gentle jogging.
It was adopted by 5 15-minute working classes. By 4:30am, Aman was weighing 56.9kg — 100g much less. The coaches and the wrestler heaved a sigh of reduction.
In between these classes, Aman was given lukewarm water with lemon and honey and a little bit of espresso to drink.
Aman wouldn’t sleep after that.
“I watched movies of wrestling bouts, the entire night time.” “We saved checking his weight each hour. We did not sleep the entire night time, not even through the day,” mentioned coach Dahiya.
“Weight slicing is routine, regular for us however there was pressure, quite a lot of pressure on account of what occurred the opposite day (with Vinesh). We couldn’t let slip one other medal,” mentioned Dahiya.
All of the arduous work got here to a fruition when Aman gained the bronze medal, beating Puerto Rico’s Darian Cruz on Friday to turn out to be India’s youngest ever Olympic medallist.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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