Don't have strength for more: Vinesh announces retirement
Addressing her mother Premlata, Vinesh, a three-time Olympian, wrote, "Ma, wrestling has won, I have lost. Please forgive me, your dreams and my courage, everything is broken."
PTI
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Her stunning decision comes a day after Vinesh appealed against her disqualification from the Olympic finals in the Court of Arbitration for Sports. PHOTO: PTI
Paris, 8 Aug
Her long-cherished Olympic dream
shattered by a cruel twist of fate, a crestfallen Vinesh Phogat bid adieu to
her international wrestling career on Thursday, saying that she doesn't have
the strength to continue anymore.
The 29-year-old, who was
disqualified for being 100gm overweight ahead of her 50kg category gold medal
bout in the Olympics on Wednesday, announced her decision on social media,
seeking forgiveness from everyone who supported her.
Addressing her mother Premlata,
Vinesh, a three-time Olympian, wrote, "Ma, wrestling has won, I have lost.
Please forgive me, your dreams and my courage, everything is broken." "I
don't have any more strength now. Goodbye wrestling 2001-2024. I shall be
indebted to you all. Forgive (me)," added the two-time world championships
bronze-medallist.
Her stunning decision comes a day
after Vinesh appealed against her disqualification from the Olympic finals in
the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), demanding that she be awarded a
joint silver medal.
An ad-hoc division of CAS, which
has been set up here for resolution of any disputes arising during the Olympic
Games, will take up her appeal in the next few hours. She spent a good part of
the day at a polyclinic inside the Games village owing to severe dehydration
caused by her desperate measures to make the cut, which included going hungry,
avoiding fluids and staying up all night to sweat it out.
Cuban wrestler Yusneylis Guzman
Lopez, who lost to Vinesh in the semifinals, replaced her in the final against
American Sarah Ann Hildebrandt. Hildebrandt won the bout to claim gold and
Vinesh is now banking on CAS to be a joint silver-medallist with Lopez.
However, the sport's international
governing body, United World Wrestling (UWW) has made it clear on its part that
the current weigh-in rule will not be changed as of now. "On IOA's
suggestion that a wrestler's results from the day on which the athlete met the
weigh-in requirements should not be disqualified, the UWW President was
sympathetic.
"UWW will also discuss the
suggestion at an appropriate platform but it could not be done
retrospectively," the world body said in a statement late on Wednesday
after its President Nenad Lalovic met IOA chief PT Usha.
Vinesh had scripted history by
becoming the first Indian woman wrestler to reach the gold medal bout in her
category on Tuesday night. She was assured of at least a silver medal before
the disqualification. Vinesh is a three-time Olympian and has won gold medals
in both the Asian and Commonwealth Games.
For the past one year, she had also
been the face of fierce protests against former Wrestling Federation of India
head Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has been accused of sexual harassment by
women grapplers.
Vinesh, who has always competed in
the 53kg category, was forced to come down to 50kg just months before the Games
after the Paris quota place in that division was locked by Antim Panghal. Panghal
lost in the opening round itself and is facing deportation after trying to
facilitate her sister Nisha's access to the Games Village on her accreditation
card.
Vinesh's Painful Olympic record
Vinesh's relationship with the
Olympic Games has been a painful one, starting with her debut in the 2016 Games
in Rio de Janeiro. She had to be stretchered off the mat after suffering a
career-threatening anterior cruciate ligament tear in her quarterfinal bout.
Vinesh was 21 at the time and
sobbed bitterly through that ordeal, something that prompted an emotional
response from even her opponent -- China's Sun Yanan, who famously walked along
with the stretcher as a gesture of support for the debutant.
She rebuilt herself over the next
four years and made it to the Tokyo Games, which were held at the time of the
COVID-19 pandemic. But this time, she seemed a bit under-prepared and was
knocked out following a quarterfinal loss.
Her build-up for the 2024 Games was
perhaps the most controversy-ridden and tumultuous. She was on the streets for
over a month, protesting against Brij Bhushan and the "government
inaction" on the charges against him. She eventually dropped to 50kg
category to stay in the hunt for an Olympic spot and against all odds, made it
too. But as fate would have it, she fell short yet again.
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