When Asmita Dey stood on the Commonwealth Games podium in Glasgow, there was one person she kept thinking about. Her father, Arjun Dey, was not there to see the moment. Her father had passed away seven months earlier after suffering a brain stroke.On Friday, July 31, the 23-year-old from Tripura made history by becoming the first Indian judoka to win a Commonwealth Games gold medal. Competing in the women’s 48kg category, Dey defeated Canada’s Heidi Quach 2-1 in Golden Score to claim a title that had eluded Indian judo for decades.
28 Jul 2026 | 16:22
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But for Dey, the victory was never just about a medal. It was about the father who repaired bicycles for a living, earned around Rs 300 a day and raised his family in a mud house in a small village in Tripura. It was about the man who, despite having little money, refused to let his daughter’s circumstances dictate the size of her dreams. “I am from a very small village in Tripura. People there don’t dream this big. But Papa always supported me,” Dey said after her victory.
From running to the judo mat
Dey was not destined for judo from the beginning. Born on March 22, 2003, in Belonia, South Tripura, she initially competed in athletics, including the 800 metres. Her introduction to judo came almost by chance, when a coach spotted her potential and encouraged her to try the sport.
Asmita Dey’s Commonwealth gold came months after the death of her father
She began training at Belonia Vidyapeeth Coaching Centre under Bina Debnath before moving to Tripura Sports School, where she trained under Manik Lal Deb. Her performances in school competitions and the Khelo India circuit eventually took her to the Sports Authority of India Regional Centre in Bhopal in 2018. There, coach Yashpal Solanki became an important figure in her development.The transition was not easy. Judo demanded years of training, travel and competition, all of which came at a cost for a family that was already living with limited means.
Her father nevertheless kept backing her.
According to a PTI report, when a serious knee injury threatened her career, he took her to Delhi for treatment and paid for her medicines despite the financial strain. For Dey, that support mattered as much as any training programme. Then, in December 2025, her biggest supporter was suddenly gone.
‘I thought everything had finished’
Her father’s death came just days before Dey qualified for the Commonwealth Games at the selection trials in New Delhi.The loss hit her hard. The person who had encouraged her to dream beyond the limits of their small village was no longer there, and Dey briefly felt that there was little reason to continue. “I thought everything had finished,” she said after winning the gold. Her mother, however, did not allow her to walk away from the sport.Only days after her husband’s funeral, she encouraged Dey to return to training. Her message was simple: her father had never stopped her from pursuing judo, so she should not stop now.Her coach Yashpal Solanki also called and urged her to come back to the mat. The support helped Dey resume training at the SAI centre in Bhopal. What followed was the hardest stretch of her career- trying to prepare for the biggest competition of her life while dealing with the absence of the person who had helped her reach that stage.
The Tripura-born judoka overcame personal loss and a difficult journey to claim Commonwealth gold.
The gold her father never saw
By the time Dey walked into the arena in Glasgow, the journey had already taken her a long way from the mud house in Tripura.She had established herself on the international circuit, winning bronze at the Asian Cadet and Junior Championships in 2022, gold at the Junior Asia Cup in Macau in 2023 and, in 2025, her first senior international title at the Casablanca African Open.But the Commonwealth final was different.Against Quach, Dey was pushed into Golden Score after the regulation period ended with the scores tied. She eventually secured the decisive point to win 2-1 and make history for Indian judo. The medal ceremony should have been a moment of unfiltered celebration. Instead, Dey found herself wishing her father could have been there.“Kaash, papa medal dekh paate,” she later recalled- wishing that her father could have seen the medal.
A medal, and a different dream
The gold has changed what Dey can imagine for her family. Asked what she wants to do now, she has a surprisingly simple answer: build a house for them. For someone who grew up in a mud house, the dream is deeply personal. Judo, she says, has already given her discipline, medals and the opportunity to travel the world. Now, she wants to use what the sport has given her to change life for the family that stood behind her when she had very little.“I want to build a house for my family,” she said.Her Commonwealth gold has already rewritten one part of Indian sporting history. Dey is the country’s first Commonwealth Games judo champion. But perhaps the more telling part of her story lies elsewhere- in a bicycle repair shop in Tripura, in a father’s modest daily earnings, in a mud house where an unlikely sporting dream was allowed to grow, and in a daughter who returned to the mat even after losing the person who had first taught her to dream that far.
