3 min readUpdated: Oct 3, 2026 03:43 PM IST
Aman Sehrawat is only 23 but he has ensured a glittering career for himself already. He won gold at the 2026 Asian Games in men’s freestyle 57kg, upgrading the bronze he had won at Hangzhou 2022 and adding to the bronze medal he won at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Aman beat North Korea’s Han Chong Song 11-7 in the gold medal match.
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This is India’s fourth medal from the wrestling mat as well and their second gold. On Friday, Sujeet Kalkal won gold in men’s freestyle 65kg, recording a stunning come-from-behind win against Abdulmajid Kudiyev of Tajikistan. Nitesh became the first Indian silver medallist at the Asian Games in greco-roman wrestling since 1952, winning the medal in men’s 97kg. Sunil Kumar, meanwhile, won bronze in men’s greco-roman 87kg.
Sehrawat had become the first Indian to win a gold medal at the Under-23 World Championships, when he won 57kg title in 2022. Next year, his star rose further when he bronze in the weightclass at the Hangzhou Asian Games, that had been delayed by a year due to COVID-19. Sehrawat also won gold at the 2023 Asian Championships. A year later, he became the youngest Indian to win an individual Olympic medal when he won the 57kg bronze at Paris 2024 at the age of 21 years and 24 days.
Born on July 16, 2003 in the village of Birohar in Haryana, Sehrawat was 10 years old when he lost his mother, who suffered from depression. A year later, he lost his father, who couldn’t bear the untimely demise of his wife. At 11, Sehrawat was orphaned. “This medal is for them,” he had said after winning the Olympic bronze. “They don’t even know that I became a wrestler, that there’s something called the Olympics.”
He stayed with his uncle but a few months later, he was brought to Chhatrasal, where, under a residential programme, young children were admitted and moulded into champion wrestlers. The coaches at the fabled academy did not check Sehrawat’s potential. They took him in out of sympathy, thinking if nothing, they would at least be able to provide the scrawny, under-weight and shy young boy with the bare minimum – two proper meals a day.
Aman Sehrawat, his coaches say, took to the new environment like a duck to water and submerged himself into the austere life of a wrestler: wake up before the sun would rise, climb ropes that are displaced from a giant tree, grapple in the mud and train on the mat.
