Anshu MALIK

Her father Dharamvir represented the Indian junior wrestling team in the 1990s and the sport was a way of life in her village.

Anshu Malik’s first brush with wrestling came at the age of 11 when she saw her brother Shubham train and insisted that she wanted to try it out too.

Her father was more than willing to support her and Anshu Malik soon began training at the Chaudhary Bharat Singh Memorial School under coach Jagdish Sheoran, who follows her career closely to this day.

Soon enough, Anshu Malik was making waves. She won her first medal - silver at the 2016 Asian Cadet Championships - and followed it up with bronze at the 2016 World Cadet Championships.

In 2017, Anshu Malik was crowned the world cadet champion in the 60kg. She then won the 2018 Asian Cadet title and won bronze at the 2018 World Cadet and Junior Championships.

Next year, Anshu Malik won gold at the 2019 Asian Junior Championships. The graduation to the senior level in 2020 proved seamless.

In an impressive 2020 season, the Indian wrestler won silver at the Matteo Pellicone ranking series in Italy, bronze at the Asian Championships and silver at the individual World Cup.

In 2021, Anshu Malik qualified for her maiden Olympics in Tokyo after finishing second in the qualifiers. She soon followed it up by becoming the 2021 Asian champion in the 57kg division.

At Tokyo 2020, Anshu Malik, competing with an injured elbow, fell in the round of 16 to eventual silver-medallist Iryna Kurachkina of Belarus.

She then lost to another Olympic silver-medallist Valeria Koblova of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in the repechage round to bow out of her maiden Summer Games.

However, Anshu Malik soon put the Tokyo Olympics disappointment behind her to win a historic silver medal at the 2021 World Championships.

At her Commonwealth Games debut at Birmingham 2022, Anshu Malik celebrated her 21st birthday by winning the silver medal in the 57kg category. The top-seeded Indian breezed past her opponents till the semi-finals but went down to Nigeria’s Odunayo Adekuoroye in the summit clash, who completed a hat-trick of the CWG titles.

Later in the year, Anshu Malik was honoured with the Arjuna Award - India’s second-highest award for sportspersons - for producing consistent performances over the years.

Anshu Malik was one of India’s medal hopes at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She competed in the women’s 57kg after obtaining the Olympic quota from the Asian Wrestling Olympic Qualifiers in April 2024.

However, Anshu Malik was knocked out in the opening round after losing to USA’s Helen Maroulis, the Rio 2016 gold medallist, in the round of 16. Helen Maroulis was the same opponent against whom Anshu Malik had lost in the final of the 2021 World Championships.