---
title: "Asmita Dey wins India's first Commonwealth Games judo gold in Glasgow; First-ever CWG judo gold for India"
sdDatePublished: "2026-08-01T13:11:00Z"
source: "https://www.olympics.com/en/news/who-is-asmita-dey-india-judoka-medals-records"
topics:
  - name: "sport"
    identifier: "medtop:15000000"
locations:
  - "Belonia"
  - "Tripura"
  - "Bhopal"
  - "Kuwait"
  - "Thailand"
  - "Morocco"
  - "India"
  - "Canada"
---


Asmita Dey wins India's first Commonwealth Games judo gold in Glasgow; First-ever CWG judo gold for India

Who is Asmita Dey? Know India's first Commonwealth Games judo gold medallist

Who is Asmita Dey - a Tripura bicycle mechanic's daughter who took a detour to India's first CWG judo gold

Having started her career as an 800m runner, Asmita made history at Glasgow 2026, becoming the first Indian judoka to win a Commonwealth Games gold medal.

Asmita Dey did not go looking for judo . Judo, in a sense, found her.

The daughter of a bicycle mechanic from Tripura’s Belonia district began her sporting life on the running track, competing over 800m with no thought of the combat mat.

She was even good at it, earning call-ups for district-level trials in the medium-distance running discipline. However, a brush with judo - when a coach introduced her to the sport - quietly rerouted her career.

That detour reached its high point at the Commonwealth Games 2026 in Glasgow, where Asmita became the first Indian judoka - male or female - to win a gold medal at the combat sport at the CWG .

Born on March 22, 2003, into modest means, Asmita Dey grew up with three siblings, with her father Arjun Kumar Dey running a bicycle repair shop.

After her introduction to judo, Asmita Dey was guided in her formative years by coach Bina Debnath at the Belonia Vidyapeeth Coaching Centre and later under Manik Lal Deb at the Tripura Sports School.

Her results in the school games and Khelo India circuit earned her a place at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) Regional Centre in Bhopal in 2018.

There, under veteran coach Yashpal Solanki, she was folded into the national programme and later the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) development group.

Asmita Dey, who idolises compatriot Avtar Singh and Japanese great Uta Abe, first made waves after winning a medal at the Asian Cadet and Junior Judo Competition 20222 in Thailand, becoming the first judoka from Tripura to win an international medal.

She built on the reputation in 2023, taking the women's -48kg gold at the Junior Asia Cup in Macau and a silver at the Asian Open in Kuwait.

Asmita struck gold at the 2025 Casablanca African Open in Morocco, marking her maiden top podium finish at a senior international event.

The Indian judoka carried that momentum into 2026, finishing fifth at the Asian Senior Championships, coming up just short of the podium while competing against some of the continent's highest-ranked judokas.

At home, Asmita was as prolific, picking up multiple gold medals at the Khelo India University Games and was crowned junior national champion in 2023-24.

Asmita Dey at Commonwealth Games 2026

For all those markers, nothing matched Glasgow. Competing in the women's -48kg category, the Tripura-born judoka worked her way to the final, beating Scotland's Eva Ewing by ippon in the quarter-finals and edging another home favourite, Summer Shaw, in the semis.

The gold medal bout tested her tenacity. Up against Canada's Heidi Quach, Asmita held her nerve to come from behind to force Golden Score - judo's sudden-death extra time - before landing the decisive throw to seal a historic Commonwealth Games judo gold for India.

From her father's bicycle repair shop in Belonia to the top step in Glasgow, Asmita Dey's climb has been rapid and improbable in equal measure. Still in her early 20s and with an Olympic medal her stated ambition, Asmita’s story still seems to be in its opening chapters.

Picture by 2026 Getty Images

Commonwealth Games 2026: India’s medal tally