Hair chopped, didn't drink water, tried to draw out blood: Vinesh Phogat went through THIS intense weight-cut process
PTC News Desk: Vinesh Phogat's coaches and support team went to great lengths to get her weight under the 50kg limit before the official weigh-in ahead of her historic gold medal match.
According to the India Express, the 29-year-old cleared the weigh-in before her event on Tuesday morning but was discovered to be 2kg overweight later that night. To add to Vinesh's worry, the coaches did not allow her to sleep all night. To lose weight, she fasted for more than 12 hours and engaged in intense jogging, skipping, and cycling.
When everything else failed, the coaches chopped Vinesh's hair and even "attempted to draw out blood."
Vinesh became weak and dehydrated as a result of the harsh measures. She was brought to a medical clinic inside the Olympic Village after feeling dizzy and losing consciousness for a short while.
Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala, Chief Medical Officer of the Indian Contingent stated that, "Her post-participation weight at the end of the semi-finals in the evening was found to be 2.7 kg more than the allowed weight. The team and the coach started off their usual process, which is of course limitation of water and no food, and started with the whole process of sweating it out. Typically, you require some amount of time for that. But unfortunately, we didn't have too much time."
"We had just 12 hours. So the whole night, the entire team, went ahead with this whole process of trying to reduce her weight - putting her in a steam and sauna, making her exercise and whatever was medically possible. We tried our best to try and get that weight down. When she couldn't sweat anymore, we even had to go to some drastic measures like cutting off her hair," he added.
"If we maybe had a few hours more we could have achieved that 100 grams, but we just didn't have that time."
Cutting weight is a painful process that wrestlers must go through if their natural body weight exceeds the division in which they compete. Vinesh's natural body weight is between 56 and 57kg, and it takes a lot of effort to get down to 50kg.
However, all these extreme measures were not enough.
Vinesh, who made history as India's first female wrestler to reach an Olympic final, was disqualified hours before her gold medal fight after failing the weigh-in. Vinesh was just 100gm overweight.
She was disqualified from the competition and given no rank, making her victories on Tuesday null and void.
The Indian wrestler will not even receive the silver medal, which she was assured after reaching the finals. According to the United World Westling Rules, "If an athlete does not attend or fails the weigh-in, he or she will be eliminated from the competition and ranked last without a ranking."
- PTC NEWS
