BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 57 of 143

Correct — C, 57 kg. Aman Sehrawat wrestles in the lightest men's freestyle Olympic class, 57 kilograms, and it was there that he won his quota place at the 2024 World Wrestling Olympic Qualification Tournament held in Istanbul in May 2024 — the last chance to qualify for Paris, and the only one India's men took. Born on 16 July 2003 at Birohar village in Haryana and trained at the Chhatrasal Stadium akhara in north Delhi under the coach Lalit Kumar, he had already built a record in that weight class before Istanbul: gold at the Under-23 World Wrestling Championships in 2022, bronze at the 2022 Asian Games held at Hangzhou in 2023, and gold at the Asian Wrestling Championships in 2023, all at 57 kg. The Paris campaign confirmed the class. He lost his semi-final to Rei Higuchi of Japan and then beat Darian Cruz of Puerto Rico 13–5 in the bronze medal bout, taking India's only wrestling medal of those Games and becoming, at 21 years and 24 days, the youngest Indian ever to win an individual Olympic medal. The three wrong options are not invented: 65, 74 and 86 kilograms are all genuine Olympic men's freestyle classes, alongside 97 and 125, so the question rewards knowing the athlete's specific division rather than recognising that a number sounds like a wrestling weight. Since Aman Sehrawat has competed at 57 kg throughout his senior career, the qualification, the medal and the class are one consistent fact.

• (a)65 kg — A real Olympic men's freestyle class and the one Indian followers know best, because Bajrang Punia had made it familiar over the previous Olympic cycle. Attaching the most familiar weight to the newest name is exactly the error the option is built to catch.
• (b)86 kg — A genuine Olympic freestyle category, but a middleweight one — nearly thirty kilograms above the class Aman Sehrawat competes in. It is the least plausible of the three decoys for anyone who has seen him wrestle, and it is on the list to spread the numeric range.
• (d)74 kg — Another real Olympic freestyle class, and one India has contested at previous Games, which gives it surface plausibility. But Aman Sehrawat's entire senior record — the 2022 Under-23 world title, the 2023 Asian gold, the Istanbul quota and the Paris bronze — sits at 57 kg.

Olympic wrestling is contested in three styles — men's freestyle, women's freestyle and Greco-Roman — with six weight classes in each. Men's freestyle runs 57, 65, 74, 86, 97 and 125 kilograms, and the class an athlete belongs to is a fixed part of their identity, because it determines who they can ever face. Qualification for the Games is by quota place won at designated events, not by national selection alone: the World Championships come first, then continental qualifiers, and finally the World Olympic Qualification Tournament, which is the last route available. India's only male quota for Paris 2024 came at that last event, in Istanbul in May 2024, when Aman Sehrawat won at 57 kg. That is why the stem describes him as the first Indian male wrestler to qualify — he was in fact the only one, and India's Paris wrestling squad was otherwise entirely women. Understanding the qualification ladder matters for the exam because current-affairs questions routinely name the tournament rather than the Games, and a candidate who does not know that a World Olympic Qualification Tournament exists will misread the stem.

Learn a sportsperson as a triple — name, event and the exact classification within that event — because the exam almost always tests the third element. Here, knowing that Aman Sehrawat is a wrestler is worth nothing; the question turns entirely on the weight class. The reliable anchor is that his Paris bronze, his Istanbul quota, his 2023 Asian gold and his 2022 Under-23 world title all sit in the same category, so any one of them fixes the others. If you have no recall at all, there is a weak physical inference available: at 21 he was a light, quick wrestler competing in the class India has traditionally been strongest in, and 57 kg is the lightest men's freestyle division, which is where India's Olympic wrestling medals have historically come from. That is a nudge, not a proof, and it is worth remembering that guessing on this paper costs one third of a mark. The broader habit to build is to track each Olympic cycle by medal, athlete, event and category in a single table, because BPSC returns to Indian sport in every paper and usually asks for the one detail a headline leaves out.

• Aman Sehrawat won India's only men's wrestling quota for Paris 2024 in the 57 kg freestyle class at the World Wrestling Olympic Qualification Tournament in Istanbul in May 2024
• He was born on 16 July 2003 at Birohar village in Haryana and trained at the Chhatrasal Stadium in north Delhi under coach Lalit Kumar
• At Paris 2024 he lost the 57 kg semi-final to Rei Higuchi of Japan and beat Darian Cruz of Puerto Rico 13–5 for the bronze medal
• At 21 years and 24 days he became the youngest Indian to win an individual Olympic medal
• His earlier titles in the same class are gold at the 2022 Under-23 World Championships, bronze at the 2022 Asian Games held at Hangzhou in 2023, and gold at the 2023 Asian Wrestling Championships; the Olympic men's freestyle classes are 57, 65, 74, 86, 97 and 125 kg

• Attaching the weight class of a better-known wrestler to a newer name; 65 kg belongs to a different Indian career
• Confusing the World Olympic Qualification Tournament with the World Championships — both award quota places, but at different points in the cycle
• Assuming a quota place is won by the country and then filled by selection; in wrestling the quota is earned in a specific weight class

BPSC asks Indian sport as a one-line current-affairs fact that hangs on a precise detail — the weight class, the medal colour, the host city of the qualifier — with the other options drawn from the same real list so that partial knowledge does not help. UPSC very rarely asks about an individual athlete; when it turns to the Olympics it asks institutional or historical questions, such as a Games motto, which sports were newly added, or which sport a particular trophy belongs to.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Aman Sehrawat won the bronze medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics in which event ?

  • (a)Men's Greco-Roman 60 kg
  • (b)Men's freestyle 57 kg
  • (c)Men's freestyle 65 kg
  • (d)Men's Greco-Roman 77 kg

  Answer(b) Men's freestyle 57 kg — he beat Darian Cruz of Puerto Rico 13–5 in the bronze medal bout, taking India's only wrestling medal at those Games.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  How many weight classes are contested in men's freestyle wrestling at the Olympic Games ?

  • (a)Four
  • (b)Five
  • (c)Six
  • (d)Eight

  Answer(c) Six — 57, 65, 74, 86, 97 and 125 kilograms, with six classes likewise in women's freestyle and in Greco-Roman.