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This is part of Slate’s 2024 Olympics coverage. Read more here.
It’s been a thrilling yet ultimately tragic week for one of India’s greatest wrestlers.
On Tuesday, Vinesh Phogat pulled off a historic upset in the Olympics’ women’s 50kg freestyle semifinals by taking down Japan’s Yui Susaki—the defending champion who’d clinched the gold medal back in Tokyo without losing a single point. Susaki’s record of only ever having lost three matches in her entire career, coupled with the fact that India had only ever won a single Olympic medal for wrestling (via the now-retired Sakshi Malik, who nabbed a bronze in Rio for the 58kg freestyle), made the outcome of the Paris matchup seem obvious. Not to mention that Susaki had never lost an international bout.
Yet Phogat shook everything up this time. After losing 2 points to Susaki, Phogat took advantage of an opportune moment to topple Susaki to the ground and keep her there in an unbeatable grip, a move that granted her victory. The shock on Susaki’s face, and the unbridled ecstasy on Phogat’s, would make the enormity of this stunning moment clear even to a newbie. Not only had Phogat taken Susaki out—she was now an official contender for the gold, and the first-ever Indian woman to reach that position.
The sheer excitement of the moment then suddenly, cruelly collapsed. Early Wednesday morning, not even 24 hours before Phogat’s scheduled fight against the United States’ Sarah Hildebrandt, Team India announced that its contender had been fully disqualified from the Games and would not even take home a medal. “Despite the best efforts by the team through the night, she weighed in a few grams over 50kg this morning,” read the official release. The Indian Express, citing anonymous sources, reported that Phogat had weighed in at just 100 grams over the 50-kilogram threshold.
To be clear, this hadn’t been the case for her prior matches; she met weight exactly when facing off against Susaki. But by Tuesday night, according to the Express, she found herself weighing 2 kilograms over the limit and engaged in strenuous overnight efforts to cut that down: “She didn’t sleep the whole night and did everything in her capacity to meet the criteria—from jogging to skipping and cycling,” even going for “desperate measures like her hair being chopped, her clothes shortened, and tiring sauna procedures.” Yet she ran out of time: “Sources said the Indian delegation pleaded for some more time to give her a chance to shed the last 100 grams, but to no avail.” The Indian newspaper the Hindu alleged that Phogat had even resorted to drawing blood. She’s since been hospitalized at the Olympic Village due to dehydration; India’s chief medical officer informed the Guardian that “she feels perfectly well.”
The Olympics rules state that competitors must remain within the weight class on all tournament days. So even though Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly reached out to the Indian Olympic Association to see what could be done, there was no pathway for a Phogat return. The Wrestling Federation of India filed an appeal of Phogat’s disqualification with United World Wrestling, but the sporting authority’s chief told journalists in Paris that it would be “impossible” to either requalify Phogat or get her a silver medal, despite his personal sympathies. The finals match will push ahead on Wednesday night with Hildebrandt taking on Cuba’s Yusneylis Guzmán Lopez, whom Phogat had beaten in the quarterfinals.
This sad development has upturned both international wrestling and Indian politics—especially the latter. If you only just now learned of Vinesh Phogat thanks to her Tuesday victory, you may not realize that she’s an Indian icon not just for her athletic prowess, but for her spirited, effective activism. Early last year, as I wrote, Phogat heard from a group of junior Indian women wresters who were afraid to attend a training camp thanks to sordid stories they’d heard about Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the coach who was then in charge of the Wrestling Federation of India and also served as a member of Parliament for Modi’s political party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Specifically, the athletes had heard that Bhushan Singh often sexually harassed women wrestlers, groped them and solicited them for sex, and threatened anyone who might complain of his misbehavior to another authority. Phogat had her own awful encounters with Bhushan Singh and had even previously informed Modi about him herself, although nothing was then done about it. So she teamed up with fellow high-ranking wrestlers, anti-Modi protesters from across the country, and sympathetic fans to occupy key regions of India’s capital and demand Bhushan Singh’s ouster. After persisting through brutal conditions—police violence, heat waves, mosquito infestations, a continually stalled investigative process—and even threatening to throw away their international-tournament medals, the wrestlers notched some key victories. Police indicted Bhushan Singh on several charges, and he eventually resigned from both the WFI and Parliament. It was a limited victory—people close to him eventually took over both his WFI position and his parliamentary seat, leading Sakshi Malik to retire from her career in protest—but still a significant one, as a concession from a ruling party that wasn’t in the habit of bowing to protesters’ demands.
In light of her status as both celebrity athlete and feminist agitator, Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification inevitably had political ripple effects at home. Politicians in the coalition that opposes Modi, the BJP, and their governing partners accused Indian leaders of not doing enough on Phogat’s behalf and walked out of Parliament in fury on Wednesday. One MP in this group called for an Olympics boycott, while another claimed that Phogat’s disqualification and lack of ability to compete again was part of a “conspiracy” from the national government in retaliation for last year’s protests. Still others pointed out the hypocrisy of BJP politicians who’d raged against the wrestlers’ protests now cheering Phogat and wishing her the best, while famed MP and onetime actress Hema Malini appeared to smirk at Phogat’s condition when speaking to reporters. The whole event has once again become another spark for rage and political battle within India’s polarized society.
Yet the person who will suffer most is not any politician or sporting chief, but Vinesh Phogat herself, who fought her absolute damndest on behalf of India and its women, only to have it all taken away, and to be perceived as merely a pawn in the nation’s endless political wars.
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