In what looks like a merciless turn of fate, Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat was disqualified from the Olympics finals in Paris after she failed to match the weight requirements for the women’s 50 kg bout. Vinesh was among the wrestlers who protested at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar against the Wrestling Federation of India’s former chief Brij Bhushan Saran Singh, alleging sexual harassment. She, along with the other protesting wrestlers, was manhandled and detained by the Delhi police, who later charged Brij Bhushan, ex-BJP MP, with sexual harassment and criminal intimidation. Vinesh’s charging victory into the Olympic finals, a first for any Indian woman wrestler, was an iconic moment of redemption not just for the sport, but also for the morale of women around the world attempting to take on powerful harassers.
But after the weigh-in on the morning of the final bout, she exceeded 50 kgs by a little over 100 grams, leading to her disqualification from the entire tournament. She also lost the silver medal which she had confirmed after defeating Cuba’s Yuznelis Guzman in the semi-finals.
Explaining the process of weight cut down, the Indian team’s chief medical officer Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala said that most wrestlers compete in a weight category that is lower than their normal weight to leverage competitive advantage. But reducing too much weight also tires them out. To compensate, they are given limited water and high-energy foods after the weigh-in.
Members of Vinesh’s team told the media that her usual weight is 57 kg, and usually competed in the 53 kg category. She had meticulously worked on her body and managed to weigh 49.9 kg before the semi-final bout. She had three bouts on the same day against the hitherto undefeated Japanese champion Yui Susaki, who she defeated in a glorious win. But to replenish herself, she had to eat between bouts to gain energy.
Even if she had a small meal, her weight would shoot up to at least 53 kg. She weighed 52.7 kg the night before the finals, and it was reported that the athlete, along with her team, spent the whole night trying to bring her weight down. They even resorted to measures like cutting her hair, sweating her out in the sauna, and abstaining from consuming food and water. Sportstar reported that the team even attempted to draw out blood from her body. She was able to bring her weight down to 50.1 kg, but there was no time to cut down the last 100 grams.
“Vinesh had three bouts, and to prevent any dehydration, some amount of water had to be given. We found that her post-participation weight had increased more than normal, and the coach initiated the normal process of weight cut he has always employed with Vinesh. This is something that has worked for her for a long period of time. He felt confident that this would be achieved, and over the night we went ahead with the weight cut procedure. However, in the morning, we found that despite all of our efforts, her weight was 100 grams over the 50 kilogram weight category. Hence, she was disqualified,” he said in a statement.
The Paris Olympics has 13 weight categories in wrestling — six for women, and seven for men. On each day of the competition, there is a weigh-in and medical examination for all athletes who have bouts that day. There is a 30-minute window during the weigh-in, and within this, the athletes can weigh themselves any number of times. But for the finals and repechage, this window is reduced to 15 minutes. It was during this stretch of time that the team reportedly tried cutting Vinesh’s hair and altering the length of her clothing to reduce weight. But none of it worked.
According to the rules of the United World Wrestling (UWW), the international governing body for the Olympics, if an athlete is absent at the weigh-in, or exceeds the weight limit, they are disqualified and ranked last without a ranking.
Weight requirements for wrestling have pushed quite many athletes against the wall. In the aftermath of the stress of weight cuts and training during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Vinesh herself had said she was reduced to shivering after her first bout. She also did not have her regular physiotherapist with her at the time. She had then announced a break from the sport to heal from the stress, citing how the mental pressure had worn her down.
Though the categories in wrestling are decided based on weight, the process of losing and maintaining weight takes a heavy toll on athletes, especially women, some of whom have to exit like Vinesh after making it to the top.
Only months before this debacle, Dr Samuel Pullinger, the head of Sports Science at JSW’s Inspire Institute of Sport that trains many Olympic athletes, had spoken at length to the Indian Express (IE) about the dangers of the gruelling methods female wrestlers are forced to use to drop weight. As pointed out in the report, wrestlers build muscle mass in the run-up to the competition, possibly weighing a few kilos more than their limit, before going on crash diets to rapidly drop weight.
“The unscientific practice relies on them loading up till the last possible day, and then spending a couple of days before competition eating and drinking nothing or very minimal,” the report said. Added to this routine are methods to lose weight in saunas, like what Vinesh attempted, and other means to sweat out the ‘excess’ weight.
“It might even have yielded success for both men and women, as they leverage their muscle power to compensate for dipping energy. But the effects of repeatedly doing this – for trials and competitions – can prove dire for women wrestlers,” IE also said.
What Samuel pointed out in the article is based on his own experience of seeing a stream of Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) knee injuries and ligament tears in women, due to these methods.
Wrestle Like A Girl, a US-based advocacy group for women wrestlers, has explained how the female body gains or drops weight compared to men. “Female bodies react to stress differently than male bodies. An example of this is the ironic struggle where a girl starts to stress about making weight and in response to that stress, her body holds onto weight and will not let it go, resulting in further stress,” the organisation has pointed out in their website.
Wrestle Like A Girl was founded by Sally Roberts, an American veteran athlete who won the Women in Sport Award from United World Wrestling (UWW) in 2016. The organisation has stated that sleep is “a critical component of weight management,” and that a female athlete needs 8-9 hours of quality sleep to recover physically. As many know, Vinesh was forced to stay up the whole night using various methods to meet the 50 kg criteria the next morning.
The organisation has also insisted that utilising hydration shifts to make weight puts them at a greater performance disadvantage when compared to male athletes. The reason they cited is that sweat-out workouts are a less efficient method for women as their bodies require electrolyte replenishment. Vinesh, as we know, was hospitalised with severe dehydration after she failed the weight test, with unconfirmed reports saying that she fainted before being taken to the hospital.
Menstrual cycles also have an impact on women’s weight. So when women athletes follow similar weight-loss methods to male athletes, they can develop serious health concerns. In a piece titled ‘Women Shouldn't Wrestle Like Men’, Victoria Ngai, who has been wrestling since she was in high school, wrote a moving account of her own experience with “unhealthy weight-loss methods.”
“This weight-cutting technique, though routinely successful for my male teammates, put an intense amount of strain on my body. As a result, I lost my period for five months during my ninth-grade winter sports season,” Victoria wrote. She added that this continued into the next year of her school. When she finally had a medical check-up, she was told she had developed amenorrhea (the loss of your period for 3+ consecutive months), “likely from cutting too much weight too quickly.”
She made a poignant observation in the piece: “If I had been treated as an individual instead of being given a one-size-fits-all approach, I might have been able to prevent myself from developing amenorrhea. Sadly, this is just one example of how the lack of individual treatment of female wrestlers can jeopardise health and performance potential.”
American Olympic gold medallist wrestler Jordan Burroughs has spoken up in defence of Vinesh and demanded that she be allowed to retain her silver medal. He recommended rule changes in UWW, including a 1kg weight allowance for the second day of a match. He also suggested that after a semifinal victory, the medals for both finalists should be secured even if they miss the weight limit on Day 2.
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