Vinesh's anguish, Nisha's despair — wrestling against fate in Paris

You don’t need to be a subject matter expert to know that sport is a microcosm of life.

Sport can be both uplifting and discouraging, it can be motivational and heartbreaking, it can make an athlete soar into the stratosphere and bring one firmly back to the ground. It can both give in abundance and snatch away without mercy. It can be the wind beneath your wings and also cut off your legs, robbing you of every ounce of mental energy and fortitude.

Indian sport has, over the decades, had many ‘so close yet so far’ and intensely heartbreaking moments at the Olympics - from gut-wrenching fourth place finishes for the Indian football team in Melbourne 1956, Milkha Singh in Rome 1960, PT Usha in Los Angeles 1984, Leander Peas and Mahesh Bhupathi in Athens 2004, Joydeep Karmakar in London 2012, Abhinav Bindra and Dipa Karmakar in Rio 2016, the Indian women’s hockey team and Aditi Ashok in Tokyo 2020, Arjun Babuta in Paris this time, to excruciating injuries like Vinesh Phogat’s ACL tear in Rio 2016 and equipment malfunction which Manu Bhaker was a victim of in Tokyo 2020. They were all medal prospects, but fate had other plans.

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And this time, on the wrestling mats of Paris, an unimaginably cruel twist of fate lay in wait for two of India’s wrestlers. Vinesh Phogat and Nisha Dahiya were both gutted. You could see the tears of one on the mat, the other wept in the shadows.

By now, you will of course know every detail of how and why Vinesh was disqualified and not surprisingly many are looking for someone to blame. But who?

First and foremost, let’s understand that the rules are extremely stringent. Yes, Vinesh was just 100 grams overweight at the weigh-in on the morning of her final bout, but technically that is not allowed. So, what really went wrong? The answer, in many ways, doesn’t just lie in the hours before her final bout, but in what transpired many, many months before that.

Let’s look at it sequentially.

Vinesh’s natural body weight fluctuates between 55 and 57 kgs (currently) and wrestlers typically pick weight categories that are less than their natural weight. This of course means that they need to continually cut their weight in order to compete. Same for Vinesh.

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Vinesh’s Olympic debut was in Rio 2016 where she competed in the 48 kg category. This was the same category in which she had won a bronze medal at the Incheon Asian Games in 2014. But this was not a weight category she could sustain in the long run, as her body grew older and weight cuts became more and more difficult. This is why by the time the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta rolled around, Vinesh was competing in the 50kg category. She won the gold medal at those Games in this category along with the gold in the Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast in the same year. In the 2013 Asian Championships in New Delhi, Vinesh won the bronze medal in a new category - the women’s 51kg.

The next logical progression was the 53kg category. This was the weight category she was in at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. She was in fact the top seed in her weight class at those Games and the reigning World Number. 1, having won the gold in the Almaty Asian Championships in this category. In the 2022 World Championships in Belgrade, she clinched the bronze medal in the same weight category.

So, why did Vinesh go back to competing in the 50kg weight category for the Olympic Games in Paris?

The reason is, in some ways, two-pronged.

One.

Vinesh was one of the most prominent faces of the wrestler protests against former Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, which began in January of 2023. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that in many ways she spearheaded the protests, along with Olympic bronze medallist Bajrang Punia, as they regularly clashed with police forces. The wrestlers refused to attend camps or participate in any tournaments at this time. Vinesh was also carrying a knee injury. Her future was extremely uncertain.

Vinesh Phogat was the face of the wrestlers’ protest against former WFI head Brij Bhushan. AP

Two.

At a time when Vinesh was missing in action on the wrestling mats, one of the most promising new wrestlers in the Indian wrestling fraternity - 19-year-old Antim Panghal (a two-time u-20 World champion) first beat the reigning World champion and then beat two-time European champion from Sweden, Emma Jonna Denise Malmgren to win the bronze medal at the 2023 World Championships in the women’s 53 kg category. More importantly, this win secured a quota place in this weight category for India.

Traditionally, the quota winner in wrestling has been the one to represent the country at the Olympics. So, could Vinesh still compete in the 53kg category in Paris? There was no real clarity on whether there would be trials for this weight category or not. As it turned out, there were trials, but Vinesh couldn’t take any chances and so she did something unprecedented in many ways - she weighed in for both the 50kg and 53 kg Olympic trials in March at the National Institute of Sport in Patiala. She won the 50kg trials and had a top-four finish in the 53 kg category. This meant that there was still no guarantee that she could compete in the 53 kg division. She could have tried to wrestle in a higher weight category or choose the 50kg one - a category she had last wrestled in and won medals in in 2018.

She chose the 50kg category, while Antim Panghal competed in the 53 kg division in Paris.

Suffice to say that Vinesh had taken on a herculean task - of cutting her body weight down to 50kgs or less, something she wasn’t physically used to doing for almost six years.

The new weigh-in rules that were introduced by the governing body of world wrestling (UWW) in 2017 also had a part to play in Vinesh’s disqualification. This is when wrestling competitions were spread over two days as opposed to the one-day format earlier. This meant that wrestlers (those who made the final and repechage rounds) would have to weigh in on two successive days, on the morning of their competitions.

Ironically for Vinesh, this was done so that wrestlers wouldn’t have to lose too much weight on one day. Something she would have happily agreed to if asked.

But Vinesh had to cut weight two days in a row and she and her team tried everything possible to do that. Dr. Dinshaw Pardiwala, the Chief Medical Officer of the Indian Olympic Association was quoted as saying - “Vinesh was found to be 100 grams over her 50kg weight category, and hence, she was disqualified. All possible drastic measures, including cutting off her hair, were used. However, she was not below her allowed weight of 50kg.”

Vinesh’s struggle to lose 2kg overnight:  Skipping, jogging and attempting to draw out blood

So, where does the buck stop? Who will take responsibility? That is the million-dollar question and there honestly cannot be a simple answer.

At a time when a million conspiracy theories are doing the rounds, it would really be a tremendous disservice to Vinesh’s team and especially her to question any one individual team member’s motives. This is not a case of an athlete failing a dope test, this is something very different and the extremely challenging task of going against her natural progression through weight categories was really a result of everything Vinesh has had to endure off the mat, as she fearlessly fought against a system often labelled ’tyrannical’. If she was not protesting, chances are she would have won the quota place for India in her favoured 53kg category.

The cruelest blow of them all is the fact that she came so close to Olympic glory in Paris, only to see her dream not just slip away but shatter into a million pieces. While many in the international wrestling fraternity have come forward to support Vinesh, with many asking for a rule change, the reality is that the one who is and will be hurting the most is Vinesh herself and this is not something that will hurt for a while and then go away. She will have to find immense inner strength to overcome this heartbreak. This was her third Olympic Games and she is on the threshold of turning 30.

Vinesh’s emotional statement on social media that sounded very much like a formal retirement announcement was painful, but not surprising. Some times the resolve to keep fighting hits a dangerously low point. Maybe she will reconsider in some time and decide to return to competitive wrestling.

While we cry for Vinesh Phogat, unable to even imagine what she must be going through, let us also not forget about Nisha. Let us not forget her blood, sweat and tears.

Here’s a wrestler who was leading against her North Korean opponent 8-2 in the second round of the women’s 68 kg freestyle category, when fate stepped in to rob her of her Olympic medal dreams.

Nisha, an Asian Championship silver medallist was two points away from a semi-final appearance in her maiden Olympics. This could have also been a medal for India. But that was not to be.

With a win well within her grasp, one grapple by the North Korean wrestler, Pak Sol-gum saw Nisha picking up a rather painful injury. It wasn’t clear initially what exactly she had injured, but it looked like a finger injury in her right hand, as she called for a medical time out. Two of her fingers were taped together, but Nisha, who was already in tears, was still very much in a lot of pain and discomfort. She was holding her right wrist and then her right shoulder was looked at as another break was taken.

The 25-year-old Nisha was in no position to compete but refused to give up and kept telling the referee that she wanted to continue. But as she stayed on the mat valiantly, her body just didn’t allow her to fight on. Though Nisha had adopted a defensive strategy, the North Korean wrestler wasted no time in making up the deficit, scoring eight consecutive points and eventually winning the bout 10-8 to enter the semis.

Nisha was understandably inconsolable. The scenes reminded one of Vinesh’s ACL tear in her knee in Rio 2016, as she writhed in pain and had to be stretchered off.

The IOA later issued a statement confirming that Nisha had suffered a shoulder injury, stating - “Wrestler Nisha sustained a severe shoulder injury during her bout today. It required reduction and MRI. She has been ruled out of the competition. The course of her treatment will be planned after further tests are performed.”

India coach Virender Dahiya later claimed in a statement made to PTI that Sol-gum’s corner had sent out a message to her to attack Nisha’s joints in a bid to injure her.

“It was 100 percent intentional, they hurt her intentionally. We had seen, that there was an instruction from the Korean corner. They attacked the joint. They have taken away the medal from her,” Dahiya claimed.

While there’s no doubt that it was an on-mat grapple that saw Nisha picking up the injury, the questions one needs to ask are - did the North Korean wrestler do anything illegal? And if yes, why didn’t the referee spot it and punish her?

If there was something illegal involved in terms of a manoeuvre, surely the Indian Olympic Association would have lodged an official complaint by now or at least issued a statement addressing the allegation. The fact that there aren’t any news reports from Paris that anything like that has been done suggests that everything in terms of wrestling moves and manoeuvres must have been kosher?

And that makes it all the more difficult to come to terms with. A freak injury that came in the way of another potential medal.

Maybe it was just another instance of an Indian athlete wrestling against fate.

Let’s just hope and pray that no matter how long it takes, both Vinesh’s and Nisha’s spirits and their resolve to continue to fight - on and off the mat - can heal.

Akaash is a former Sports Editor and primetime sports news anchor. He is also a features writer, a VO artist and a stage actor see more