With a minute and 40 seconds left on the clock at the Nagoya City Inae Sports Centre, Sujeet Kalkal was staring at a 2-9 deficit and a silver medal.
Eleven seconds from the end, the 23-year-old from Haryana had the gold.
The Indian freestyle wrestler beat Tajikistan’s Abdulmazhid Kudiev 10-9 in the men’s 65kg final, sealing one of the most dramatic comebacks of the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. Trailing by seven points deep into the bout, Kalkal launched a late burst of takedowns, closed the gap, and landed the decisive two-point takedown with 11 seconds remaining to move to 10 and finish ahead of Kudiev’s 9.
It was the finish of a campaign that had already produced the biggest win of his career. In the semi-final, Kalkal edged reigning Olympic champion Kotaro Kiyooka of Japan 3-3 on criteria, denying the home favourite on the last scoring action after the Japanese wrestler had led early. Earlier in the day, he had beaten Afghanistan’s Sayed Omar Zazai 13-3 by technical superiority and blanked Iran’s Abbas Ebrahimzadeh 10-0.
The gold caps a year in which Kalkal has barely been beaten. He is the reigning Asian champion, having defeated Kudiev 7-2 in the semi-finals of the 2026 Asian Championships in Bishkek before taking the title, and he also holds the World Under-23 crown. The Asian Games final was a rematch that looked lost until the last exchanges.
The result also ends a long wait in Indian men’s wrestling. Kalkal is the first Indian man to win Asian Games wrestling gold since Bajrang Punia in 2018. Yogeshwar Dutt had won the 65kg title in 2014; the weight class had not returned an Indian gold since.
Born in Imlota, Haryana, on 5 November 2002, Kalkal has climbed through the age-group ranks with medals at the U23 Asian and World Championships before establishing himself at senior level. On Friday, the route was not clean. Kudiev, a world medallist, controlled the first half and built a 9-2 lead. What followed was four two-point attacks in the second period, the last of them arriving when the bout had almost run out of time.
For Indian fans watching the clock, it was the kind of finish that rewrites a match report in a single move. From 2-9 down to 10-9 up, Sujeet Kalkal left Nagoya as Asian Games champion.
