In which one of the following Freestyle weight categories, Aman Sehrawat became the first Indian male wrestler to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics at the World Wrestling Olympic Qualifiers, Turkiye

Question

In which one of the following Freestyle weight categories, Aman Sehrawat became the first Indian male wrestler to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics at the World Wrestling Olympic Qualifiers, Turkiye in May 2024 ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2024 Q57 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q57 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer