It’s late night in Bishkek. Less than 12 hours before her quest for a Paris Olympics quota begins. And Vinesh Phogat is at the home of the friend of her coach’s friend.
She’s sitting in a sauna. The temperature is set at 98 degrees Celsius. Her coach, Woller Akos, is slapping a bunch of dried branches and leaves on her body to generate more heat. Waiting for beads of sweat to surface. But in vain.
After two sessions of 15 minutes each, Akos steps out of the sauna. He is drenched, face red and skin burnt. But the entire exercise has little impact on the person it was meant for – Phogat.
In desperation, Akos turns to Phogat’s physiotherapist, Ashwini Patil, and in all seriousness, asks for a pair of scissors. “He wanted to cut my hair,” Phogat laughs. “In his mind, if that helped reduce even 50 grams, it was worth it. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.”
Last Saturday, the wrestler competed in her first international tournament since September 2022 and, without conceding a single point, secured a Paris Olympics quota place for India. Phogat needed less than six minutes to win her three bouts and get the job done. To be ready for that, the 29-year-old had to endure an hours-long ordeal.
The real drama unfolded the night before, on Friday, when she had to reduce at least 700 grams to meet the weight criteria to compete in the 50 kg category. ”Weight cut was the main issue,” she tells The Indian Express. “Match kisi k saath he kara lo, uska darr nahi tha.”
Vinesh had fought tougher bouts in the last 15 months, after accusing former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of sexual harassment. (PTI/File)
Indeed, she had fought tougher bouts in the last 15 months, after accusing former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of sexual harassment: leading the protests against the BJP MP, sleeping in tents on footpaths, getting dragged on the streets of the Capital by the Delhi Police, returning national awards and fighting a battle in the courts.
Returning to her natural environment and facing wrestlers on the mat must have felt like a less daunting challenge.
***
It’s the second week of December 2023.
Phogat is stepping on the wrestling mat after what feels to her ‘like an eternity’.
Besides her is Wayne Lombard, the South African sports science guru who transformed the Indian women’s hockey team’s fitness levels at the Tokyo Olympics.
Lombard has a simple task for Phogat: to walk on the mat. “It was our first mat session; ahead of what the doctors originally said but it was important we pushed quicker than originally planned,” Lombard, who had overseen Phogat’s rehab after her injury at the Rio Olympics, had told this paper earlier this year.
One step, two, three and she collapses. The pain pierces through her body. Her knee, still stiff from the surgery performed in August following an ACL tear had ended her first jab at a comeback post the protests.
Right there, Phogat breaks down. “I cried also because it had been four months (since the injury) and still, there was no clarity as to when I could wrestle,” she says. “There were so many moments where I cried. Ro, ro kar he uthe hai.”
File photo of Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat (right). (PTI Photo)
A seven-strong team of experts – a coach (Akos), a doctor (Dinshaw Pardiwala), a physio (Ashwini Patil), a sports scientist (Wayne Lombard), a strength and conditioning expert (Mayank Garia), a nutritionist (Tajinder Kaur) and a manager (Yatin Bhatkar) – provided by Olympic Gold Quest works 24×7 behind the scenes to get Phogat in shape to wrestle.
All this while, Phogat wrestles with her insecurities and doubts.
Antim Panghal, one of the finest young wrestlers in the country, had already won a quota place in the 53 kg category, which is also Phogat’s pet weight class.
The Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) has kept the selection criteria for the Olympics vague. In the past, those who won a quota also went for the Games. This time, there have been talks about a selection trial at the end of May or early June. But no confirmation so far.
A selection trial would mean the two 53 kg wrestlers, Phogat and Panghal, facing off in the winner-takes-all bout for a spot on the Paris-bound team. But the decision rests in the hands of Sanjay Singh, the close aide of Brij Bhushan who is now the WFI president.
“I didn’t want to give power to someone else to decide my fate. I’d die of that stress,” Phogat says. “If there were trials in 53, then it would be the best scenario. But I wanted to compete in the 50 or 57 kg category and win a quota myself.”
A difference of opinion emerges. Doctors and physios advise Phogat to jump to 57 kg. Bajrang Punia, the Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist and a face of the protests along with Phogat and Sakshi Malik, calls to give his two cents as well.
“Bajrang also tried to convince me to compete in 57,” Phogat says. “Everyone thought that it wasn’t ideal to cut so much weight coming out of an injury.”
But Phogat, her husband and India wrestler Somvir Rathee, and Akos think differently. “We were siding more towards competing in 50 kg,” she adds.
Vinesh Phogat trains in the practice area at the venue of the senior wrestling nationals a day before her return to the mat after nearly 18 months. (Special Arrangement)
Their reasons are twofold: To compete in 57, Phogat would have to increase her power to match the strength of the wrestlers in that weight and the fact that she was familiar with most of the wrestlers who competed in 50 kg.
“Our target wasn’t just qualifying for the Olympics. We were thinking about winning a medal, too. There was risk in both categories, but it was worth it in 50. I went by my instincts even though I knew weight cut mein jaan nikal jaegi. (It would be really difficult to go through a weight cut).”
***
It’s April 19, the night before her opening bout in the 50 kg category at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers in Bishkek.
Phogat stands on the weighing machine she carries to every competition. “It showed I was 700 grams overweight,” she says. When she began mat training in December, she was nearly 10 kilos over. By April 17, she’s brought it down to 52.
The final few grams, however, prove most difficult to shed even though she has eaten nothing the whole day and drank only 500 ml water – 300 ml on the flight to Bishkek and 200 during the training session that evening.
Panic creeps in. From the training venue, Akos takes her to the hotel in the car of his friend, a local wrestler. But the sauna at the hotel is as hot as Akos wants. “It was around 60 degrees,” Phogat says. “And we wanted above 90.”
Vinesh Phogat competes in the 55kg category at the Senior National Wrestling Championships. (Special Arrangement)
So, they drive around 45 minutes in the night and knock on the door of the coach’s friend’s friend.
“Coach also stepped into the sauna with me, and started tapping me to generate more heat. He also dipped a branch and leaves in hot water and started slapping me with it to see if that could help,” Phogat says. “But I wasn’t sweating. It has happened before that if I get into a sauna immediately after training, I don’t sweat much. After a while, I told the coach, I was feeling suffocated. My skin was burning but I wasn’t sweating.”
After 30 minutes, she steps out. On the way back to the hotel, Phogat stops over at the venue where the weigh-in is to be held Saturday morning to check her weight on the scale. “I had burnt 300 grams.”
It’s only then Akos – who along with the rest of the team was down with ‘Bishkek belly’ – breathes easy. The Hungarian knew Phogat’s body pattern was such that she lost 200-300 grams while sleeping. The rest, however, were still panicking.
“By the time I reached the hotel, the word had spread that I was a little over. So, Bajrang called and advised me to train at night, keep the heater on in the room and do everything to ensure I had the weight under control before I slept. I told all of them, ‘Have you all gone mad! And I stopped answering their calls.”
After barely a few hours of sleep, Phogat and Akos leave for the venue at 6.30 am. They are among the first ones to reach the weigh-in venue, to give themselves enough time to shed the extra grams if she was still overweight.
Phogat stands on the weigh scale. The needle stops at 49.9 kg. Phogat gets off it, texts her team, gulps down a ‘1-litre bottle of electrolytes water in 40-45 seconds’ and wolfs down a couple of bananas along with a jam sandwich, her first meal in more than 24 hours.
By the end of the day, the Olympic-medal-hungry wrestler gobbles down her three opponents to seal a Paris quota.
