Wrestler Vinesh Phogat Announces Retirement After Paris Olympics Disqualification. We’re Not Ready For Goodbye
Wrestler Vinesh Phogat announces her retirement from the sport a day after disqualification!
Vinesh Phogat made history by becoming the first Indian female wrestler to reach the Olympic finals. But this was short-lived when the wrestler got disqualified moments before her gold bout for being overweight. Amidst this, Vinesh Phogat announced her retirement from the sport a day after her disqualification. The wrestler announced it to the nation via a social media post. The wrestler wrote, “Alvida Kushti” on her post.
Vinesh Phogat Announces Retirement From Wrestling
Vinesh Phogat was disqualified from the Paris Olympics and stripped of her medal after failing to meet the weigh-in requirements on Wednesday morning. The Indian wrestler weighed 100 grams too much. A day after this, she took to X on Thursday morning to post about her retirement from the sport. She wrote, “Mother wrestling won against me, and I lost. ” She said sorry to the entire nation by saying that she doesn’t have the strength anymore. “Goodbye wrestling, 20021-2024. I have you all to my eternal gratitude. Forgive (me).” She concluded. It saddened everyone to see a capable and deserving spirit retire. She will always be remembered for her great contribution towards the nation.
माँ कुश्ती मेरे से जीत गई मैं हार गई माफ़ करना आपका सपना मेरी हिम्मत सब टूट चुके इससे ज़्यादा ताक़त नहीं रही अब।
अलविदा कुश्ती 2001-2024 🙏
आप सबकी हमेशा ऋणी रहूँगी माफी 🙏🙏
— Vinesh Phogat (@Phogat_Vinesh) August 7, 2024
After the unfortunate disqualification, Phogat’s health was affected too. Due to extreme dehydration brought on by her desperate attempts to make the cut—which included going without food, avoiding fluids, and staying up all night sweating it out—she had to be rushed to a polyclinic in the Games village. In an attempt to lose weight, she even attempted to cut her hair short. However, nothing was effective. She filed an appeal against her disqualification in the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) late on Wednesday night. She requested that she be given a joint silver medal.
After losing to Vinesh Phogat in the semifinals, Yusneylis Guzman Lopez, a wrestler from Cuba, took her spot in the championship match against Sarah Ann Hildebrandt from America. She is now counting on CAS to co-win the silver medal with Lopez after Hildebrandt prevailed in the fight to take home the gold. The guidelines for CAS admission of these cases are extremely explicit. To initiate a request, the claimant is required to pursue “all internal remedies available to her/him under the statutes or regulations of the sports body concerned.” The only exception is where “the appeal to the CAS Ad Hoc Division would be ineffective due to the time needed to exhaust the internal remedies.” Nevertheless, United World Wrestling (UWW), the world governing body of the sport, has informed the IOA that there is now no way to modify the weigh-in rule that resulted in Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification.
First Published: August 08, 2024 10:34 AM
