Imagine getting your India jersey, your kit bag, everything packed for your first-ever Asian Games and then being told, just days before the flight, that you’re not going.
That’s exactly what happened to 18-year-old wushu fighter Divyanshi Choudhary.
In June 2026, Divyanshi won the national trials in Srinagar, beating Naorem Roshibina Devi a two-time Asian Games medallist to earn her spot in the Women’s 60kg Sanda category. On 22 August, the Sports Ministry confirmed her name in India’s 508-member Asian Games contingent, part of the 7-member wushu team for Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. She got her kit ready. Her jersey ready. Everything a young athlete dreams of.
Then everything changed. During training camp at NIS Patiala, she started complaining of leg pain in mid-August. The pain didn’t go away, and it soon moved to her knee, with swelling. Doctors sent her for an MRI on 23 August. The scan found a partial high-grade ACL tear with large fluid buildup in her knee. Based on this, doctors advised rest, rehab, and possibly surgery, and said she should not compete. On this medical basis, the Wushu Association of India (WAI) dropped her and replaced her with the same athlete she had defeated in trials — Roshibina Devi, who was the official standby.
That’s when Divyanshi spoke out. In a video that went viral, she said she’d been “mentally harassed from June to September” and accused the federation of favoring Roshibina over her despite her trial win. In another emotional video, she said she felt hopeless about missing her first Asian Games and apologized to her parents for it.
WAI(Wushu Association of India) responded with an official statement laying out the medical timeline the trials, the selection, the injury complaints, the MRI, and an orthopaedic doctor’s diagnosis of the ACL tear as the basis for replacing her.
In her latest video, Divyanshi says the federation later sat down with her and explained their side directly: they didn’t want to send an injured athlete to the Games and risk her long-term career. She says she now understands that reasoning, and hopes to recover, come back stronger, and win gold for India in the future.