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. (Highlights | Medal Table | Schedule & Results)
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 afterജ 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-dayﷺ weigh-in.
The 21-year-old Aman lost the semifinal against Japan's Rei Higuchi around 6:30 p༒m.
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 wre🦂stling and it was followed by a one-hour hot-bath session.
At🔯 12:30 they hit the gym, where Aman had a nonౠ-stop one-hour run on the treadmill.
Theꦅ sweating would help in cutting weight. He was then given a 30-minute break, followed by fi꧋ve 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-miꦡnute running sessions. By 4:30am, Aman was weighing 56.9kg -- 100g les🤪s. The coaches and the wrestler heaved a sigh of relief.
In between these sess✅ions, Aman was given lukewarm water with lemon and honey and a bit o🔥f 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 butꦰ 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 fruitioℱn when Aman won the bronze medal, beating Puerto Rico's Darian Cruz on Friday to become India's youngest ever Olympic medallist.
