Antim Panghal Wins Silver in Women’s 53kg Wrestling at Asian Games

Antim began against Kazakhstan’s Shugyla Omirbek and registered a comfortable 9–0 victory. She scored through four separate takedowns, keeping her opponent scoreless throughout the contest. The comprehensive result took her into the quarterfinals and provided a confident start to her pursuit of another Asian Games medal.

Quarterfinal: Antim Beats Sakibjamal Esbosynova by Fall, Leading 8–0

Uzbekistan’s Sakibjamal Esbosynova was Antim’s next opponent. The Indian led 2–0 at the break before extending her advantage with another takedown. She subsequently moved 8–0 ahead and secured a fall, or pin, to end the contest. Although the scoreboard stood at 8–0, the victory was officially achieved by fall rather than simply on points.

Semifinal: Antim Overcomes China’s Jin Zhang 6–1

In the semifinal, Antim faced China’s Jin Zhang and won 6–1 to book her place in the final. Zhang scored the opening point, but Antim responded with six unanswered points. Her comeback ensured she would leave the competition with at least silver and gave her an opportunity to challenge for gold.

Final: Antim Loses to Moe Kiyooka 1–9

The gold-medal match brought a tougher challenge against Japan’s Moe Kiyooka. Antim could not reproduce her earlier dominance and finished on the losing side of a 1–9 scoreline. As the contest approached its closing stages, she increased her attacking efforts while trailing. Kiyooka capitalised on those opportunities to extend her advantage and secure gold.Despite the final defeat, Antim’s silver marked progress from her previous Asian Games bronze. Her route to the podium combined three victories with just one point conceded before the final, making the campaign a notable achievement for Indian women’s wrestling.

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Antim Panghal is an Indian freestyle wrestler who competes in the 53kg weight category. She comes from Haryana's wrestling heartland and trains in a family that has produced several wrestlers, including her sisters. What makes her career stand out is how early the big results arrived: she was a world-level champion while still a teenager, years before most wrestlers reach their peak.

Her style is built around speed and attacking leg-defence, traits that made her a junior standout before she had to prove herself against senior opposition on the biggest stages.

Antim Panghal was born on 31 August 2004 in Bhagana, a village in Haryana's Hisar district. Wrestling runs in the family, and she took up the sport at a young age, training on the mud and mat akhadas that have produced generations of Haryana's top grapplers.

Her rise through the junior ranks was rapid. She won gold at the 2022 U20 Asian Championships and the 2022 U20 World Championships, becoming India's first-ever U20 World Champion in the sport, and defended that world title again in 2023.

Antim's move to senior competition brought immediate results. At the 2023 World Championships in Belgrade, she won bronze in the 53kg category, a breakthrough medal that came within weeks of her Asian Games appearance the same year. She added a second World Championships bronze in the same category at Zagreb in 2025, and briefly reached the world No. 1 ranking in the 53kg class that year.

Along the way she has also picked up Asian Championships silver in 2023 and bronze in 2025, along with Grand Prix golds in Tunisia, Budapest and Ulaanbaatar.

At the 2022 Asian Games, delayed a year and held in Hangzhou in 2023, Antim made her Asian Games debut in the 53kg category. She beat Uzbekistan's Jasmina Immaeva in the opening round before losing her quarter-final to two-time world champion Akari Fujinami of Japan. That defeat sent her into the repechage bracket, and she came through it to beat Mongolia's Bolortuya Bat-Ochir 3-1 in the bronze medal bout.

It was India's first wrestling medal of the Hangzhou Games and made her, at 19, the first Indian female wrestler to win a medal at that edition.

Antim qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics in the 53kg category and was seeded fourth, among the first group of Indian wrestlers to receive an Olympic seeding under a system introduced for Paris. The Games themselves did not go to plan, and she left without a medal, a result she has spoken about as motivation heading into the 2025 and 2026 seasons, where she returned to the podium at both the World Championships and the Asian Championships.

• India's first-ever U20 World Wrestling Champion (2022), a title she then defended in 2023
• Two-time World Championships bronze medallist (2023 Belgrade, 2025 Zagreb)
• First Indian female wrestler to win a medal at the Hangzhou 2023 Asian Games
• Reached the world No. 1 ranking in the 53kg category in 2025
• Seeded wrestler at the 2024 Paris Olympics in the 53kg category
• Awarded the Arjuna Award in 2023, and named UWW Women's Rising Star of the Year the same year

Antim Panghal built her name as a junior champion and then had to prove it all over again against the senior field, which she has done with two World Championships medals and an Asian Games bronze. As she returns to the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, the 53kg gold that eluded her in Hangzhou is the target this time. Her bout is on 3 October, and you can track every India bout on our Asian Games 2026 wrestling schedule.

For her full profile, rankings and competition history, see Antim Panghal on Wikipedia.