Antim Panghal - India’s young wrestling sensation

A prodigious talent, India’s Antim Panghal has taken the world of wrestling by storm in the past couple of years.

Antim Panghal is already a two-time Under-20 world champion and an Asian Games, Asian Championships and senior world wrestling championships medal winner.

Antim is also the first Indian woman to win a gold medal at the U-20 wrestling world championships. Her meteoric rise becomes particularly impressive considering she wrestles in the 53kg women’s freestyle category - the same division as Olympian Vinesh Phogat.

A three-time Commonwealth Games champion, two-time world championships bronze medallist and former Asian Games and Asian champion, Vinesh is one of the most decorated Indian wrestlers of all time. Antim, despite being 10 years younger than Vinesh, has already established herself as a potent rival for Vinesh on the domestic front.

Where is Antim Panghal from

Antim Panghal was born on August 31, 2004, in Bhagana village of Haryana’s Hisar district. She is the second-youngest of the five children born to Ram Niwas Panghal and Krishna Kumari.

Interestingly, Antim, which translates to ‘last’ or ‘final’ in English, is the final girl child of the Panghal family. Sarita, Meenu and Nisha are Antim’s elder sisters, while brother Arpit, born two years after Antim, is the youngest.

Sarita, a national-level kabaddi player, had a big hand in turning Antim towards wrestling. When Antim was just 10 years old, Sarita took her to the Mahavir Stadium in Hisar city for a wrestling programme.

While Antim took to the sport like fish to water, Ram Niwas was unsure in the initial stages. However, after constant requests from Antim’s coach Roshni Devi, Ram Niwas finally conceded and went all-in.

After initially accompanying Antim and Sarita in their 20km daily commutes to practise at the Mahavir Stadium in Hisar City, Ram Niwas arranged for the two siblings to stay near the training centre before slowly relocating his family there.

He eventually built a house in the city, equipped with a cattle shed. “The buffaloes were non-negotiable. If my daughter had to wrestle, she had to get the best diet and I didn’t trust the milk you get in cities,” Ram Niwas explained to The Hindu.

It was a huge gamble, Ram Niwas admits, but one that paid rich dividends, for both the family and Indian wrestling.

Antim Panghal’s medals and records

With unconditional support from her family, it didn’t take long for Antim Panghal to shine on the mat.

Antim became the 49kg U-15 national champion in Patna in 2018 and brought home a bronze from the U-15 Asian Wrestling Championships in Japan the same year. Several cadet U-17 national titles followed.

In 2020, Antim, then just 17, won the gold medal at the junior Asian Championships and doubled up with a silver at the U-23 Asian Championships, defeating opponents much older than her.

However, it was in 2022 when Antim truly established herself as a force to be reckoned with in Indian wrestling.

Antim Panghal almost denied Vinesh Phogat a spot at the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham during the selection trials in May.

Up against Vinesh in the finals, Antim took a 3-0 lead before her inexperience allowed Vinesh to claw the score back to 3-3 and win the bout by criteria. Vinesh would later go on to win the women’s 53kg title in Birmingham.

Antim Panghal, meanwhile, quickly recovered from the heartbreak to win the women’s 53kg division at the 2022 Zouhaier Sghaier Ranking Series to bag her first senior gold medal in July. The Indian wrestler defeated USA’s Dominique Parrish, who became the world champion in the category a couple of months later, en route to the title in Tunis.

A few months later, Antim Panghal would go on to win a historic gold medal at the U-20 World Wrestling Championships 2022 in Sofia to become the first Indian to win the title in the competition’s history. A year later, she would successfully defend her crown in Amman to become the only two-time junior world champion from India.

In April 2023, Antim won a silver medal at the Asian Championships in Astana. It took Japan’s Akari Fujinami, a true modern-day wrestling phenom who is yet to lose a senior bout in her career, to end Antim’s run in the final at Astana.

Having missed out on the world championships in 2022 due to Vinesh Phogat’s presence, Antim finally made her debut at the global meet in 2023 and secured a bronze medal from Belgrade.

Antim Panghal upset defending champion Parrish in the opening round but fell to Vanesa Kaladzinskaya of Belarus in the semis. She secured her bronze with a commanding win over Sweden’s Jonna Malmgren, a two-time European champion.

Courtesy of the win, Antim Panghal also secured a Paris 2024 Olympic quota for India.

Despite winning the selection trials for the Asian Games 2023, it seemed like Antim would miss the bus to Hangzhou as the federation granted a direct entry to Vinesh Phogat for the women’s 53kg category at the continental meet.

However, a last-minute injury to Vinesh handed the youngster, who was a standby for Vinesh, a crack at a medal in Hangzhou. Antim didn’t disappoint and picked up a bronze medal. Following a loss to Fujinami in the quarters, Antim Panghal defeated Mongolia’s Bat-Ochiryn Bolortuyaa, a bronze medallist from Tokyo 2020, to secure a podium finish on her Asian Games debut.

Antim Panghal was named the women’s Rising Star of the Year 2023 by United World Wrestling (UWW), the world governing body of the sport, in December. She was also conferred with the prestigious Arjuna award the same year.

The Indian grappler won a silver at the 2024 Budapest Ranking Series but her Olympic debut at Paris 2024 didn't quite live up to the high expectations as she was ousted in the opening round by Turkiye's Zeynep Yetgil.

Antim Panghal’s medals and achievements

• Under-20 World Wrestling Championships - Gold (2022, 2023)
• World Championships - Bronze (2023)
• Asian Championships - Bronze (2023)
• Asian Games - Bronze (2023)
• First Indian woman to become U-20 world champion in wrestling
• UWW Rising Star of the Year 2023