To gain something, Aman Sehrawat firstly needed to lose something.
When the scales of the weighing machine showed 61.5 kg on Thursday after his semi-final defeat to eventual champion Rei 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 to shed 4.5 kilograms of bodyweight 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 fight 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 against Japan'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 12:30 they hit the gym, where Aman had a non-stop one-hour run on the treadmill.
The sweating would help in cutting weight. He was then given a 30-minute break, followed by five 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 Chhtrasal trainee to do light jogging.
It was followed by five 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 sessions, 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, 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 but 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 fruition when Aman won the bronze medal, beating Puerto Rico's Darian Cruz on Friday to become India's youngest ever Olympic medallist.
