Precious Mettle

THE TIMELINE OF India’s Olympic history is peppered with the anguish of nearly-there. A country sighed when the great Milkha Singh finished fourth in the 400m finals at Rome 1960. Tears were spilled at the turn of the century when India’s great­est doubles pair and medal hopes at the time, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi, men who had reached all four Grand Slam finals the previous year, lost in the second round of Sydney 2000. Hearts were broken when PV Sindhu narrowly missed out on gold in Rio 2016, after winning the first game, and even more hearts were stomped upon at Paris 2024 with a spate of just-beyond-the-podium finishes by Indian athletes.

There is heartbreak and there is lingering heartbreak. Then there is Vinesh Phogat.

Phogat’s return to India from Paris without a medal has resonated at the scale of a national tragedy. For, while every other case of so-close-but-yet-so-far is steeped in the fairness of the Indian athlete being defeated by a more deserving opponent on the day, wrestler Phogat had won it all, assuring herself of a silver medal at worst by besting the best out there, fair and square. Until it was all snatched away, almost unjustifiably, once she hauled herself off the mat. From being undefeated and an easy win away from gold, Phogat now has to live with the fact that she finished last in the 50kg category of women’s freestyle wrestling, dis­qualified and disheartened. She retired from the sport shortly after.

On the night of August 6, a country wept happy tears knowing that Phogat was a step away from creating more history than just becoming the first Indian female wrestler to register her place in the final round of the Olympics, which she had by defeating Cuba’s Yusneylis Guzmán Lopez 5-0 in the semifinals. Her final against US’ Sarah Hildebrandt, who Phogat had defeated twice before in the past, was to be held the following evening. What chance did Hildebrandt stand when Phogat had already beaten the weight category’s favourite, Japan’s Yui Susaki, defending Olympic gold medallist and more threateningly, one who was unbeaten previously in 82 professional bouts, in the very first round? But just as India slept well, Phogat’s sleepless nightmare began. By the morning, hers and ours, those tears wouldn’t be so happy anymore.

Here’s what happened. In any sporting discipline catego­rised by weight, an athlete has to weigh themselves in before the day’s event(s). The act is called ‘making weight’. Wrestling is no different. On August 6, Phogat made weight at 49.90kg. But here’s the thing about weight, it fluctuates right through the day due to a host of reasons that include the essentials of life—the consumption and digestion of food and water. When this holds true for any human or animal on earth, it of course amplifies with that much more force for a professional athlete performing repeatedly through a day at the peak of her fitness, given all the nutrition she has to ingest to simply survive. So, after her final match against Lopez, and following her last glass of fruit juice, Phogat weighed a shade over 52kg.

Had the final been held on the same evening, there would have been no new weigh-in before her match against Hildebrandt, and the silver would have been hers with certainty, perhaps even the gold. But because there was a second weigh-in on the day of the medal round, she had to make weight at 50kg or less and thus her uphill battle against her body began. It has been reported that she didn’t consume a drop of water or eat a morsel of food all night, all while staying up and hit­ting the stationary cycle with a sauna-suit on, all those litres of sweat further dehydrating her but bearing fruit in disappearing grammes. The weight fell with the intensity of this workout, but, alas, not enough.

On the morning of August 7, Phogat and her team knew the writing was on the wall. Soon, it was on the weighing scale too: 50.1kg, or 100 grammes over the limit. When she stood on the machine, she did so with considerably shorter hair, for Phogat had literally tried to shave off extra grammes where she could. The word from the wrestling camp is that she begged the judges to give her a few extra minutes, unconfirmed reports of her even trying to vomit by the side to shed more grams. But so dehydrated and famished was she that there was nothing in her stomach to throw up. And that was that—a measly 100 grammes, or the weight of a pear, had done what even the great Susaki couldn’t, deny her a deserved medal.

An emotionally exhausted and physically drained Phogat was hospitalised at the Games Village in Paris shortly after. When her vitals stabilised, the 29-year-old immediately filed an appeal in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), pleading with the independent body to be awarded with a (joint) silver medal. A silver she rightly deserves, given that she had sealed it after making the right weight the previous day and one that ended up going to Lopez later that night, after she lost 3-0 to Hildebrandt, now an Olympic gold medallist. While a nation crosses its collective fingers that better sense prevails and Phogat is awarded what is rightfully hers, it must be said that no piece of metal can add or subtract from her finest victory: her legacy as Indian sport’s greatest fighter, on or off the mat.

To fight is in her genes, her blood. Born to a legendary wres­tling family, Vinesh grew up watching her uncle Mahavir train his daughters and her cousins, Geeta and Babita. By the time her storied sisters had reached the evening of their respective careers, the youngest Phogat marked her debut at the Rio Olympics in 2016. It painfully ended with a knee injury in the quarterfinals against China’s Sun Yanan. In the following Games in Tokyo, Phogat was the number one seed in her preferred weight category: 53kg. She once again lost in the quarters, to Belarus’ Vanesa Kaladzinskaya. To become the first Indian woman to qualify for a third-straight Olympics in Paris would prove to be an uphill task, but Phogat is nothing if not a warrior.

She spent the early half of 2023 protesting along with a hand­ful of other wrestlers for the removal of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh from the president’s post of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), for alleged sexual assault. Then, exactly a year ago, last August, Phogat underwent an ACL surgery on her knee, follow­ing which she had to learn to walk again. At that point, wrestling, let alone at a high level, seemed impossible. When she phe­nomenally bounced back in record time, Phogat was told that she could only go to the Olympics if she agreed to participate in the 50kg category, for a younger wrestler in Antim Panghal was preferred for the 53kg class. So, she buckled down, lost the weight and qualified nevertheless, only to run into Susaki, unbeaten and perhaps the greatest-ever in the said category.

Few gave her a chance to get through the first round, yet Phogat won 3-2, delivering Susaki the only loss of her career. A few hours later, she hit the mat at Champ de Mars once again, felling Ukraine’s Oksana Livach 7-5. Then, a few more hours later, Lopez was defeated in the semifinal without conceding a point. Had the final been held just hours later on the same night, we would be reading a different story. Susaki, Livach and Lopez, women who lost to Phogat, all got to participate in a medal round on the following day. Phogat, unfortunately, did not. In turn, she was awarded with something far greater than a medal around her neck; Phogat will return to India with an aura around her head.

DisqualifiedOlympic GamesOlympic medalParis 2024Vinesh Phogatwrestling