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‘When my father passed away, I thought everything had finished’: India’s CWG history-maker Asmita Dey remembers her dad
Asmita Dey made the whole country proud on Friday as she won India’s first-ever gold in Commonwealth Games judo at Glasgow.
Asmita Dey made history for India in the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Friday. The 23-year-old became the first Indian ever to win a CWG judo gold in the women’s 48kg category as she beat Canada’s Heidi Quach 2-1. Her journey is nothing short of extraordinary. All odds were against her but she overcame them with a lot of resilience and stoicism.
His father, no longer among us, was a bicycle mechanic in a small village in Tripura. His daily earnings amounted to practically nothing. ₹300 a day! The family lived in a mud house. There can't be a more humbling experience than that.
With all that in mind, Asmita’s success gets magnified. Life for an athlete in India can be hard. Most of them come from very poor backgrounds and for them, it’s not easy to break the shackles of poverty and oblivion. She has done it. No kudos are enough for what she has done, if truth be told. In many ways, it's nothing short of a miracle.
After winning the gold, Asmita remembered her father, who passed away seven years ago due to a brain stroke. "When my father passed away, I thought everything had finished because he was the one who supported me," she told PTI, struggling to hold back tears after her historic triumph.
“I am from a very small village in Tripura. People there don't dream this big. But Papa always supported me.”
Asmita was 12 years old when she was scouted by Manik Lal Deb, judo coach at the Agartala sports hostel. Deb recalls what her father said to him. “When he came to send her off, he told me, ‘Sir, we are very small people. Help Asmita become something. Help her do something big.' I told him if she works hard, there’s nothing that will stop her,” the Indian Express quoted Deb as saying.
Deb said Asmita showed promise right from the outset. She was small in stature but she was quick, an asset Asmita put on view many times in her rounds at CWG 2026. “We weren’t looking for judo players. We were just looking for children who were physically gifted with good motor ability. Asmita was small, but she was very explosive.
“It was, of course, a big help to her father that he didn’t have to feed one child, but he wanted big things for her. He wanted her to escape the conditions of her life,” he added.
