As the entire India sheds tears on Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification from the Paris Olympic Games, the contingent’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Dinshaw Pardiwala for the quadrennial event, shed light on the entire weight controversy. Vinesh was set to participate in her gold medal match on Wednesday but she failed the morning weigh-in, as she was overweight by about 100 grams, in the 50kg category. Dr Pardiwala explained that Vinesh’s weight gain was higher than expected after she finished her three bouts on Tuesday. But, it couldn’t be brought down in time despite extreme efforts.
In a video statement, Dr. Pardiwala and Indian Olympic Association President PT Usha gave an in-depth explanation of the entire episode.
Here’s the full text of Dr. Pardiwala’s statement:
“Wrestlers usually participate in a weight category less than their natural weight. It gives them an advantage since they are fighting with less stronger opponents. The process of weight cut prior to the weigh-in in the morning involves a calculated restriction of food and water.
Besides this, the athlete needs to sweat and that sweating is done with sauna and with exercise. Now this weight cut has the benefit of putting you into a lighter weight but does cause weakness and energy depletion, and this is counterproductive to participation.
So most wrestlers will thereafter go in for some amount of energy restoration with limited water and high energy foods.
These are usually given after the way in the calculation from the nutritionist, which is done is Athlete specific and Vinesh’s nutritionist felt that the usual amount that she takes is about 1.5 kilograms totally over the day, which gives enough energy for the buns.
Sometimes there’s also a factor of a rebound weight gain following competition. Vinesh had three bouts and hence to prevent any dehydration, some amount of water had to be given.
We found that her post-participation weight was increased more than normal and the coach initiated the normal process of weight cut that he has always employed with Vinesh.
This is something that’s worked with her for a long period of time. He felt confident that this would be achieved and over the night we went ahead with the weight cut procedure.
However, in the morning we found that despite all of our efforts, her weight was 100 grams over her 50 kilogram weight category and hence she was disqualified.
We have tried all possible drastic measures throughout the night, including cutting off her hair, and shortening her clothes. And despite all of this, we could not make that 50 kg weight category following disqualification.
As a precautionary measure, Vinesh was administered some intravenous fluids just to prevent dehydration and typically we get a few blood tests done just to make sure that everything is normal. So this process is going on at the local Olympic hospital here.
All of Vinesh’s parameters during this weight cut were normal, and throughout this process she actually felt perfectly normal.
We just interacted with the IOA doctor and it was mentioned that although Vinesh is physically and medically perfectly normal, she’s disappointed that this is her third Olympics and she had to be disqualified.’
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