Opposition MPs protested against the disqualification of Vinesh Phogat outside Parliament on Wednesday afternoon. There was talk of a conspiracy and calls from India to sabotage it.
In the evening, the farce was expanded to include marches by candlelight.
There was a devastating equation between the use of the weight concept in martial arts and its use by people who are inspired by Instagram videos and want to lose weight. Ruling MP Hema Malini put it best: “I hope Vinesh loses the extra 100 grams quickly… even though it will be of no use now.”
Amid this absurd breakdown triggered by a national headline of a sports story, there were touching messages from fellow sportspeople like PV Sindhu and Nikhat Zareen, the only ones who can even begin to understand Vinesh’s tragedy.
Poor sports journalists were completely overwhelmed by the flood of misjudgments and did their best.
“It is fortunate for India that our athlete survived,” a reporter from one of India’s largest television channels chimed in with the sensationalist press.
But the public needs someone to blame. Unfortunately, at the moment, the people in the dock are Vinesh’s aides, who set them up when all seemed lost last year. The head of the country’s wrestling association, who is believed to be on Vinesh’s banned list, has urged the central government to take strict action against them.
Dinshaw Pardiwala, the chief doctor of the Indian team, had to explain in front of the cameras how the weight classes work and that the wrestlers in this sport are in constant competition with their bodies even outside the ring.
“We cut her hair, shortened her clothes. We did everything that was medically possible,” he tried to assure.
Wayne Lombard, Vinesh’s conditioning coach and the most articulate of her support team, was inundated with messages pleading for time, saying Vinesh’s health must now be the priority.
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge,” he posted briefly.
On Thursday morning, Vinesh announced her retirement, saying she lost to “Mother Wrestling.”
Vinesh Phogat’s golden run was hijacked
Extreme reactions to sports results are nothing new in India, but this increased sharing of misinformation is unprecedented, as Vinesh had already polarized the nation like nothing else before.
Although Vinesh made headlines in international wrestling on Tuesday with his victory over undefeated Japanese Yui Susaki, the sporting news was soon overshadowed by other issues in the country.
The women viewed their victory as a personal achievement, left-wingers pounced on their celebrations, right-wingers vehemently insisted that the government had “given” Vinesh a chance at the Olympics.
Vinesh’s participation in the wrestlers’ protests last year, which put them at the centre of this political divide, was not against any political party but against a sexual predator in its ranks. Yet that is a concept that is difficult for many to grasp.
Whether the ruling government acted correctly when it shielded its husband, or whether it should have protected its star athlete from such a political storm, is certainly up for debate. But sports journalists have little to say on the matter.
Failed weigh-ins are a known risk in wrestling
Vinesh’s disqualification was a bitter blow, one of the most devastating in Indian sporting history – there can be no mistake about that. But religious sports fans and those who travel miles to cover sporting events have endured so much that this too shall pass.
It is the nature of sport that close results cause defeat and heartache, even if they are usually out of the public spotlight and found on the back pages. Sometimes these close results do not take place in public, but in the training room.
Each Olympic sport has its own physical demands.
A shooter can win medals with one hand in his pocket. A wrestler’s body, on the other hand, is always in competition mode. Because in martial arts, even at the moment of triumph, tragedy lurks just around the corner on the scale.
Ask Pappu Yadav, the Indian wrestler who failed the weigh-in at the 1996 Olympics.
“The weigh-in took place 70 km from the Games Village in America and all the officials were at the opening ceremony that day. A coach would have helped, but I was denied that too, so I could not reach my weight,” he said. The Indian Express many years ago.
Forget the outrage on social media and the shrill TV anchors fighting for you on prime time, Yadav did not even have the support of Indian officials.
In international wrestling history, the most famous failed weigh-in in recent times was that of gold medal favorite Daniel Cormier of the USA in 2008.
Boxer Mary Kom, among others, struggled with her weight during her historic run at the 2012 Olympics, but the fact that she successfully managed it did not make headlines.
Vinesh herself was disqualified in the past because she did not manage to lose weight on time.
Tokyo Olympic fourth-place finisher Deepak Punia missed the weigh-in for an Olympic qualifier in April this year.
Making mistakes at weigh-ins is a common risk in the sport, but none was as spectacular as Vinesh’s Olympic tragedy.
Flashy TV presenters have said that such a thing has never happened in a medal match at the Olympics. That’s true, but only because wrestling matches before Tokyo 2020 were usually held on a single day. Losing weight on the second day is obviously more difficult than on the first day due to the time constraints.
100 grams away from the greatest Indian sports story
The tragedy for sports journalists is that what was almost the greatest Indian sporting story of all time has, in a matter of hours, become a battle against dishonest news, with sensational reactions to the sensations on the mat taking precedence.
Vinesh, who had three of the best fights of her life on Tuesday, weighed over 52 kg – her normal body weight – after the first weigh-in where she weighed 49.9 kg because she needed to gain strength.
And what strength she has gathered!
Their victory over Susaki is a game that should be replayed in schools, homes, and coaching academies for generations to come, but unfortunately it will remain a story for the final pages.
She had to maintain a sleep schedule during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday because, contrary to all evidence, she is human.
She started trying to lose weight at 5 a.m. so she could be weighed in on Wednesday. At 8:30 a.m. she weighed 100 grams over 50 kilos.
She had been pushed to the limits of her human endurance, but perhaps even another hour would have enabled her to make one last attempt to lose the hundred grams.
If international wrestling rules were to change as a result of this incident, it would be an important milestone in the history of the sport.
There is currently a campaign going on on social media involving some North American wrestlers who are lobbying for a rule change so that Vinesh gets a silver medal. However, it is difficult to say whether they are supporting the campaign because the sport is seen as unfair or because they resonate with Indian netizens.
However, the rule is unlikely to be changed as the World Wrestling Federation originally made the change with the intention of encouraging wrestlers to compete in their natural weight classes.
In Indian wrestling this would be an anomaly.
Most of them lose weight drastically on the eve of their fight to fit into lower categories and increase their level of competition, but this is the usual way top athletes from India have to put their bodies through in order to make an impression at the Olympics.
Consider gymnast Dipa Karmakar, who had to attempt a potentially fatal technique at the 2016 Olympics so that her high difficulty rating could make up for her low execution rating.
For Indians, the level of difficulty in all sports is always very high.
All we can say for now is that sport is infinitely cruel. For someone who is not used to these cruelties, getting on the bus once every four years can be a mind-numbing experience.