Himanshi Tokas, at just 20 years old, has done what no Indian has ever done -- become a judo world no. 1. She's done it in the junior women's -63kg category, and she's done it the only the way such things come about, the hard way.
For a sport that's barely recognized, barely celebrated in this country, this a quite a big deal. She's had to train regularly outside India to push herself -- after all, unlike pure individual sport where you can push yourself to improve regardless of those around you, judo requires you to fight superior opponents to become better. She's had to make her own way to a spot that no one else has claimed, one which had no easy previously followed blueprint laid out.
That's involved sacrifices, commitment and a whole lot of planning. "Preparation has been going on for the last couple of years," Himanshi tells ESPN about getting that top rank. "The target last year was to make the top ten, which I did - it was 6 at the start of this year, so we planned the season to make it to the top: win a couple of championships, get an Asian Championship medal, and I knew I could become #1."
So, starting in January, she went to the Casablanca Junior African Cup, the Casablanca African Open, the Taipei Junior Asian Cup, and the Asian Junior Championships, winning them all. The rank came along just as scheduled. It's a level of planning, and execution, that is unusual for Indian sport, especially in a sport as far from the limelight as judo is, but that's the kind of approach that gives the feeling we'll be hearing the name 'Himanshi Tokas' for quite a while.
Take, for instance, the way she handled her first international training camp. Right now, she does a fair few of those across Japan, France and Germany, but the first time she went, she was absolutely stunned. "I went with the seniors: and I simply couldn't fight. I called my coach up and told him that I couldn't do this fighting, this training. You see, the better I'd gotten in India, the less I was getting thrown around... but here, I was getting thrown twice a minute across our five-minute training bouts," she says with a laugh. "For a month, I just kept getting thrown about. The more I did it, the more I got thrown, I started to learn what to do, what not to do..."
Learning from getting flung about a judo mat is not easy, but that's just how she operates even now. In the juniors few throw her around -- as her rank suggests -- but it's still tough in the seniors, which she competes in regularly. "When you're with the seniors, at first you get a bit overawed by their pedigree, their skill, but the way I look at it is: 'ok, fine, I may lose, but atleast now I'll really know how they play.' When you fight them is when you understand how strong they are, how much stronger we need to be to be able to beat them, to reach their levels," she says.
This way of thinking didn't come by accident, but by design. She works with a psychologist regularly, practices breathing techniques and self-talk methods to ease nerves, to dig out positivity when negativity is easier, to calm herself when spiraling comes more naturally. In a sport where no athlete is ever at 100% ("I keep dislocating my knee, shoulder, elbow..."), being 100% mentally is the only way to keep pushing forward.
It had not been this serious when she had started the sport in 2011, aged 6, for she only started taking it seriously in 2022. In between that there had been her mother pulling her out of training (fell down stairs, got a cut above her eye that scarred, and her mother was worried about future marriage prospects for a girl disfigured by scars), her mother and grandmother getting together to force her to attend training and competitions, them ignoring everyone else asking for Himanshi to be taken out of judo, her spending eight years going from competition to competition not winning anything... It was in 2019 that she won her first major medal, silver in the sub-junior nationals, after which came a bronze in Khelo India, a spot in the Centre of Excellence run by SAI, Bhopal, and by 2023 support from the Reliance Foundation.
Himanshi Tokas = Asia's Best, World's No.1 (Jr). ��
��: International Judo Federation #RFSports #LetsPlay #AsianJuniorChampionships #AsianJuniorChampion pic.twitter.com/s1uwnj4Mqa
- RelianceFoundationSports (@RFYouthSports) September 19, 2025
"The thought process [earlier] was that I'll get a medal at nationals, and I'll get a job... everyone around me back then had the same mentality: medal = job," she says. What she says next underlines just how much she's understood what it takes to make it big: "What happened after proves just how much impact the environment around you makes. My coach started focusing on me because of my quickness in understanding concepts. I started hanging out with athletes who kept thinking [about improving, not jobs] too... we never speak about people, we speak about medals: where, when, how. We always speak about the game, look at things positively."
She's been careful to ensure that way of thinking spreads to everyone close to her. "[My mother] also initially thought about getting a job as the end-goal, but the more I spoke to her about my own mentality change, she also started speaking like that. Now she tells me where medal winning opportunities are, does her own research and asks me why I'm not competing in this competition or that."
All that has now translated to this historic junior world no.1 ranking. Himanshi, though, insists the bar's set higher. She's got a senior ranking tournament coming up and soon the world junior championships. Last year she'd finished fifth at the worlds, this time she wants a medal that matches her world rank. The way she works at it, few would bet against her getting just what she wants.