Aman Sehrawat won a gold medal at the Asian Wrestling Championship 2023 in the 57 kg freestyle category on Thursday. Bagging the first gold for India at the tournament, the U23 World Champion, defeated Kyrgyzstan's Almaz Smanbekov 9-4 in the final. Showing India’s complete dominance in the 57 kg category at the Asian Championships, this is India’s fourth consecutive gold in the category, after Ravi Dahiya completed the nation’s gold medal hattrick last year.
Seharawat took down Japan’s Rikuto Arai 7-1 in the quarter-final and advanced to the semifinal to defeat China's Wanhao Zou 7-4. The gold at the Asian Championship is the wrestler’s first big medal in the senior circuit, which was won by Olympic silver medalist Dahiya had won last year.
This is the second big win of 2023 for Sehrawat; before that, he had won bronze at the Zagreb Open in February. Other than dominating these podiums, he had bagged gold at the U23 Asian Championship and silver at the U20 Asian Championship. Before that, Aman had also won the bronze at the 2018 Cadet World Championships and Asian Cadet Championships followed by a bronze at the Cadet World Championships in 2019.
Speaking of other wrestlers at the Asian Championships, Deepak Kukna (79 kg) and Deepak Nehra (97 kg) have lost their respective semifinals and now will fight for their bronze. However, Anuj Kumar (65 kg) and Mulayam Yadav (70 kg) couldn’t reach the medal round. With this, India’s medal tally at the championships has reached 11, where the women wrestlers have won 7 medals, and the men have won 4.
