Asian Games 2026: India’s wrestling gold in 57kg explained

Aman Sehrawat won the men’s freestyle 57kg gold at the Asian Games 2026.

The final score was 11-7 against North Korea’s Han Chong Song.

No Indian wrestler had won Asian Games gold in the category before.

India had won medals in the weight class, but none were gold.

Sujeet Kalkal had earlier won 65kg gold at the same Games.

He is the first Indian wrestler to win an Asian Games gold medal in the men’s 57kg category.

India had won medals in the weight class before, but none had been gold.

Sehrawat is a Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallist in 57kg freestyle.

He also won bronze at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou.

In the quarterfinals he beat Kazakhstan’s Nurdanat Aitanov 12-1.

In the semifinals he recovered from 2-6 down to beat Tajikistan’s Aiaal Belolyubskii 14-8.

Both Business Today and the Sunday Guardian reported the 11-7 final score and the first-in-category claim.

Sujeet Kalkal had earlier won gold in the men’s 65kg freestyle at the same Games.

The Asian Games 2026 are being held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, from September 19 to October 4.

October 3 was Day 14 of the Games, and India also won golds in golf, archery and cricket on the same day.

Freestyle wrestling bouts are won by scoring technical points, and a bout can also end early if one wrestler leads by a large margin.

The 57kg category is one of the lighter freestyle weight classes, and it was also Sehrawat’s weight at the Paris Olympics.

Sehrawat came back from 2-6 down in the semifinal, which meant he had already won one bout from behind before the final.

The final score of 11-7 meant the two wrestlers scored 18 points between them.

Aman Sehrawat won the men’s freestyle 57kg gold at the Asian Games 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya on Saturday, October 3.

Freestyle wrestling gold medal match (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0