A Dad’s faith, a daughter’s win — Manisha Bhanwala remembers father sahab after Worlds title in Astana

Manisha Bhanwala beat the USA’s Abigail Nette 8-6 in the women’s 59kg final at the Wrestling World Championships to become the first Indian woman to win a world title. | Photo Credit: UWW

To get an idea of what occupies an athlete’s mind, one rule of thumb is to look at their social media display picture. Some choose a medal they hope to win or a competition they are preparing for.

Manisha Bhanwala’s WhatsApp profile picture is neither of those.

For the past four years, it has been a photograph of her father, Suresh Bhanwala. She refers to him with a mixture of affection and respect as father sahab.

Suresh passed away in 2022, but Manisha says there has not been a day since then that she has not thought of him. “I’m from a small village. A very simple family. My father sahab was the one who encouraged me to become a wrestler. He always believed I would be the best. He believed in me when others didn’t,” she once told Sportstar.

What her father once believed, now everyone knows.

On Friday evening at Astana’s Barys Arena, Manisha beat the USA’s Abigail Nette 8-6 in the women’s 59kg final at the Wrestling World Championships to become the first Indian woman to win a world title.

Her gold was only the second won by an Indian in the men’s or women’s competition, coming 16 years after Sushil Kumar won the men’s 66kg title in 2010. It was a result Manisha had long dreamed of emulating.

“I made my first senior team in 2022. I had followed Sushil pehlwan. I follow (World Champions) Abdulrashid Sadulaev and (Iran’s Hasan) Yazdani. I knew they got a belt for winning. I wanted to experience what this belt was. I just wanted to win a belt of my own,” she told reporters after the win.

She could barely put the feeling into words.

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“I really don’t know what to feel right now,” Manisha said, holding a blue leather belt with the words ‘world champion’ embossed in gold. “I can’t feel anything. I’ve been waiting for such a long time for this moment. Since 2022, I’ve been writing in my diary that I would be world champion. It was my dream that I would be the first Indian woman to become a world champion. Today that dream has come true,” she said.

Two Indian women – Kajal Dhochak and Neelam Sirohi – had reached the finals in Astana before Manisha. Both returned with silver medals.

It initially seemed that Manisha, too, would fall short. Within a couple of minutes, Nette had thrown her and taken a 6-0 lead. Manisha got a point back, but was still trailing 1-6 at the break. National coach Virender Kumar tried to rally her. “You have 180 seconds. Three minutes. You can win this,” he told her. “Coach sahab, even if I only have two minutes, I’ll win this,” Manisha replied.

She had reason to be confident. A day before the final, Manisha and her coaches had studied Nette’s bouts. “We knew that she is someone who runs out of stamina in the last minute of her bouts. Thak jati hai (She gets tired). We know that Manisha is not going to give up when that happens,” Virender told Sportstar.

Relentless pace

Shortly after the resumption, Manisha caught a break. Nette dived for a takedown but then stopped, apparently assuming that the referee had blown the whistle to halt the bout. The lapse gave Manisha an opportunity to score a takedown. She was awarded an additional point after Nette’s coach failed with a challenge. With the score at 4-6, Manisha turned Nette with a gut-wrench for two points and tried to hold her down for a fall, but could not manage it.

Nette then tried to defend her 6-6 criteria lead. With half a minute remaining, however, Manisha forced a takedown to take an 8-6 lead. She held on to it to win a historic gold medal.

Manisha’s relentless pace and pressure secured the gold. But the self-belief that carried her through the final had been built over years.

Not many would have predicted that Manisha would create history in Astana. She was neither a young prodigy nor a wrestler whose recent results pointed towards a world title. At 29, she is the oldest of the 24 Indians to have won a medal at the World Championships. She had won gold at the 2025 Asian Championships, but had never medalled at either the Commonwealth Games or the Asian Games.

Growing up in Siwaha, a village about 10 kilometres outside Jind in Haryana, Manisha took up wrestling relatively late. It was her father’s idea, she says. She initially took to the sport to please him.

“I have a brother and a sister, but I was always my father’s favourite. He always looked out for me. There was never any moment where he let me feel I was any less than anyone else or that I couldn’t do something because I was a girl. He was just a small farmer. We didn’t have a lot of money, but he always made sure that I had the best to eat and never had any problems in training,” she says.

Manisha first trained at the sports school in Nidani before moving to Sir Chotu Lal Stadium in Rohtak. She was considered talented, if not spectacular, and made her senior international debut at 25, at the 2022 Asian Championships.

That tournament was marked by tragedy. “On the day I was supposed to leave for the tournament, my father suffered a heart attack and passed away. I was broken. I only got into wrestling because of him. He had always supported me even when I didn’t have any results. He believed in me all those years, and then just as I made my international debut, I lost him,” she told Sportstar.

His death changed her approach to the sport.

“After my father passed away, I made it my goal that I would do something that he would be proud of,” she told Sportstar.

Dedicated

Even within India’s international squad, Manisha stands out for her dedication. “She is without a doubt the most dedicated wrestler I’ve seen. I’ve never seen her miss out on a single day’s training. She has no distractions. Koi shauk (interests) other than wrestling. Byah me interest nahi hai. Sadhu sant jaise hai uska lagav kushti ke prati (She’s not interested in marriage. She is like a hermit in her focus towards wrestling),” says national coach Virender Kumar.

Despite that dedication, the results Manisha wanted did not come immediately. She missed out on the selection trials for the 2022 Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, as well as the Paris Olympics. And although she showed what she was capable of with gold at the 2025 Asian Championships, she fell short again at the 2026 Asian Games, losing to Japan’s Olympic champion Akari Fujinami.

“She is the senior-most wrestler in the squad so she can’t even cry in front of younger wrestlers but she would cry in front of me,” says Virender.

Manisha never allowed those setbacks to interrupt her routine, though. “Every wrestler I know takes Sunday off to rest. Manisha’s someone who will take a half day off on Saturday and work throughout Sunday,” says Mandeep Singh, who coaches her at Rohtak’s Chhotu Lal Stadium.

For Manisha, that mindset was non-negotiable. “For me, wrestling is like worship. The way I feel about my father. That’s how I feel about wrestling. My father had a saying that always echoes in my mind. He used to say, ‘If you start something, then you need to complete it.’ From my childhood, I’ve always lived by those words. I had set a goal for myself that I was going to become a World champion. I wasn’t going to give up until I had accomplished it,” she says.

Manisha says she believed her time had come in Astana. Even when two Indians – Kajal and Neelam – reached the finals a day before her competition, she felt she would be the one to make history. “When Kajal made the final, everyone was saying that she’s winning a gold. That it is an easy gold for her. But I think maybe god wanted to make me the first champion. Maybe this is the reward of my tapasya (penance),” she says.

She was in formidable form in Kazakhstan. She pinned Canada’s Laurence Beauregard, beat Mongolia’s Bolortuya Khurelkhuu 6-0 and pinned Kazakhstan’s Altyn Shagayeva in the semifinals. Her toughest bout came in the final, but after the early setback, she took control.

The victory, she hopes, will be the start of better things. She knows that 59kg is not an Olympic weight category. Next year, she will return to 57kg with the aim of qualifying for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. “Next year is very important. I will try my best to win the world belt in 57kg,” she says.

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She believes her victory will help other Indian wrestlers, too. “I think next time Indian girls won’t be scared when they get to the final. We hadn’t won any world titles till now because there was always this pressure that maybe we couldn’t do it. I think now that I have won a gold, our wrestlers’ minds will relax now,” she says.

Manisha intends to carry the same relentless mindset into the next phase of her career. Her father, she says, will remain a presence in her life.

On the day of the final, Manisha brought a special T-shirt to her warm-up. Printed on it was a photograph of her father. “I got this because I had a feeling I was going to win the gold medal. I wanted my father sahab to be there,” she says.

Even without the T-shirt, Manisha says she felt his presence when she stepped onto the mat. “I can’t explain it, but I always hear his voice. Even when he’s not here, I feel I have that connection. Even when I was competing, I could hear his voice as if he was speaking to me,” she says. “I know he’s watching me with this belt. I know he’s smiling.”