To gain something, Aman Sehrawat firstly needed to lose something. (Medal Tally| Schedule & Results|Full Coverage)
When the scales of the weighing machine showed 61.5 kg on Thursday after his semi-final defﷺeat to eventual champion Rei꧑ Higuchi, Aman had a bigger job at hand before taking the mat for the bronze medal play-off.
India's youngest🙈 Olympic bronze medal winning grappler had t🧔o shed 4.5 kilog💛rams of body weight in a stipulated time of 10 hours before mandatory second day weigh-in to qualify for the 57 kg bout.
By the time Aman was up on the weighing machine on second morning, he along with his coaches Jagmander Singh and Virender Dahiya had accomplished the mission -- reduced 4.6 kgs to be eligible for the fiꦉght at 56.9 kg.
It was case being exactly 100 gram less than critical limit. If 100 gram became tragedy for Vinesh Phogat, it was a case of relief for Aman.
On Thursday, Aman had lost his semifinal bout again💜st Jꦦapan'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 ไ12:30 they hit thꦯe gym, where Aman had a non-stop one-hour run on the treadmill.
The sweating would help i𒁃n cutting weight. He was then given a 30-minute break, followed by five sessions of 5-minute sauna baꦅth.
By the end of the last session, Aman was still weighing ꦑ900g more. He was given a massage and then the coaches asked the Chhtrasal trainee to do light jogging.
It was followed by fi🌞ve 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 session💖s, 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, the꧑ whole night.”
“We kept checking his weight every hour. We didn't sleep the whole night, not even during the day,” said coach Dahiyaꦿ.
“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 sl𒆙ip another medal,” said Dahiya.
All the𒀰 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 medallist.
