Former Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat silenced millions of her critics by defeating the world No. 1 and reigning Olympic champion Yui Susaki at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Vinesh also scripted history by becoming India’s first woman wrestler to enter the finals of the Olympic Games. However, in a heartbreaking twist of tale, Vinesh was disqualified on the morning of her gold medal match for being 100 grams overweight. This not only put her out of the gold medal match, but also denied her the opportunity to win silver.
Vinesh also filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where she had requested to be awarded joint-silver in the Women’s50kg event.
However, earlier this week, her plea was dismissed by the CAS, while the details of their verdict is expected to come out later this month.
In a now-deleted Facebook post, Woller Akos, Vinesh’s coach at Paris Olympics, said he feared that the wrestler “might die” by the end of the five-and-a-half hours of intense weight-cut.
“After the semi-final, 2.7 kg of excess weight was left; we exercised for one hour and twenty minutes, but 1.5 kg still remained. Later, after 50 minutes of sauna, not a drop of sweat appeared on her. There was no choice left, and from midnight to 5:30 in the morning, she worked on different cardio machines and wrestling moves, about three-quarters of an hour at one go, with two-three minutes of rest. Then she started again. She collapsed, but somehow we got her up, and she spent an hour in the sauna. I don’t intentionally write dramatic details, but I only remember thinking that she might die,” Akos wrote in a post which he later deleted.
For the unversed, Vinesh was hospitalised on the morning of her final bout due to dehydration. Woller also shed light on what Vinesh told him while they were returning from the hospital.
“We had an interesting conversation that night, returning from the hospital. Vinesh Phogat said, ‘Coach, don’t be sad because you told me that if I find myself in any difficult situation and need extra energy, I should think that I beat the best woman wrestler (Japan’s Yui Susaki) in the world. I achieved my goal, I proved that I am one of the best in the world. We have proved that the gameplans work. Medals, podiums are just objects. Performance cannot be taken away’,” he added.
“Vinesh had pleaded with Sakshi and Bajrang to not put their hard-earned Olympic medals in the river. She begged them to keep those because they were special. But they explained to her that the journey was important and their performance was not defined by medals. We will still be proud of the fact that our professional programme could lead to beating the best woman wrestler in the world and take an Indian woman wrestler to the Olympic final for the first time in history,” Akos signed off.
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