On August 10, the Wrestling Federation of India “temporarily suspended” star grappler Vinesh Phogat for indiscipline during her Tokyo Olympics campaign that ended in a quarter-final defeat.
The WFI officials alleged that Vinesh, who had travelled to Tokyo from Hungary where she had trained with coach Woller Akos, had refused to stay at the Games Village and train with the other Indian team members.
She also did not wear the name of the official sponsors of the Indian contingent, Shiv Naresh, and chose to wear a Nike singlet during her bouts.
Phogat was given time till August 16 to reply to the notice that mentioned indiscipline on three counts and now, she has come clean in a column that has been published in the Indian Express.
Phogat starts off by talking about how she is feeling at the moment. The WFI has pushed her into a corner and almost everyone seems to be taking potshots at her.
“... everyone outside is treating me like I am a dead thing. They write anything, they do…. I knew that in India, you fall as fast as you rise. One medal (lost) and everything is finished,” she wrote in the column.
The words show just how vulnerable she is at the moment but the WFI officials, instead of showing some empathy, have put her in the dock. Their reaction troubled her because they haven’t even bothered to ask her what went wrong. Instead, they have slapped a notice for indiscipline.
So since the WFI didn’t bother asking her, Phogat then tries to get to the bottom of her failure to medal at Tokyo 2020.
I had a concussion in 2017, since then I have suffered from it. Things become blurry. It has gone down a lot but when my head strikes on anything, it comes back.
Maybe it was that. Maybe it was the blood pressure. Maybe the weight cut. I’m used to salt capsules. They helped a lot. But they did not work in Tokyo where I was alone.
I was reducing weight. I was my own physio and I was the wrestler. I was assigned a physio from the shooting team. She did not understand my body. My sport has very specific demands. She couldn’t help me with what my regular physio used to. Last day, when I am reducing weight, am I supposed to explain things to her on how things are done in wrestling, or focus on myself? It’s unfair on both of us.
Phogat had been asking for a physio for almost six months before the Olympics. There was only one physiotherapist for four women wrestlers participating at the Games but the requests were turned down.
Then, there was also the issue of how Covid affected Phogat.
“Since I got Covid first time (August 2020), I can’t digest protein,” she wrote. “One year and I have had no protein in my body. It doesn’t stay inside. When I came back from Kazakhstan after Asian Championships, I fell ill again. I was tested positive Covid for the second time which I contacted in Almaty. I recovered and flew to Bulgaria. A few days later, my family back home tested positive.”
It was for this reason that she chose to not travel with the team. She did not want to risk exposing them to the same.
The reaction of the WFI to her loss seems to have completely broken her though. An athlete gives everything to make the Olympics and puts the best foot forward. The least they can expect is support but instead, Phogat found that the knives were out for her immediately after her loss.
“Now, I find it difficult to cry. I have zero mental strength right now. Like they did not even let me regret my loss. Everyone was ready with their knives,” she wrote.
Phogat added: “I don’t know when I will return (to the mat). Maybe I won’t. I feel I was better off with that broken leg. I had something to correct. Now my body is not broken, but I’m truly broken.”