Vinesh Phogat. Hero.

Triumph can come in different shapes

The last picture of Vinesh Phogat’s wrestling career is taken from a mobile camera. She sits on a patch of turf in a dark tracksuit, her hair jagged and uneven, knees drawn towards the chest, and eyes cast downward. Stripped of context, this could come across as an athlete taking a moment for quiet reflection before a grand final.

Far from it. This is, instead, a person experiencing the slow burn of a lifelong aspiration evaporating into thin air. Not on the mat, not because of an injury, not for any shortcoming. The weight of a cup of water had come between her and an Olympic medal.

Even from afar, sitting in comfortable rooms with no real skin in the game, the blow left some scars. In the days since, Neeraj Chopra and Aman Sehrawat’s medals have casted a much-needed glow on the Indian campaign at Paris. And yet, the morning of 7th August lingers close to the body, refusing to be shaken off, constantly reminding us what could’ve been. We had woken up that morning still giddy from the dream of a potential gold, bouncing from a guaranteed silver. And then we read the news.

“It was a very brutal day. (My first reaction) was of disbelief. Shock. I wanted to vomit. Early in the morning, somebody sent me a message. Frankly, I had no idea what was going on. It was crazy,” - Abhinav Bindra to IndianExpress

That grainy picture of Phogat is a sobering epilogue to a glorious chapter. She deserved a better finale - one bathed in the flash of a hundred professional cameras and the bright lights of an Olympic arena, punctuated by a gleaming medal around her neck and the Indian flag flying proudly across her.

The previous evening, the buzzword around Olympic wrestling commentary, from an Indian context, was ‘repechage’. Repechage is the path through which eliminated participants can find themselves back into the draw, as long as those who beat them keep advancing to the final rounds. We were discussing elimination because Vinesh Phogat’s first bout was against Yui Susaki of Japan.

I’ll keep it short. Susaki is 25, won gold at the Tokyo Olympics without conceding a single point to an opponent, and came into Paris on an unbeaten streak that stretched till 2019. Repechage was Vinesh’s only realistic chance for a medal. At 2-0 down in the bout, we started looking up the wrestlers she might face en route. And then, with the clock’s final seconds ticking away, Vinesh twisted Susaki into a lock on the mat. 3-2, Vinesh Phogat. Quarter-finals.

Merely calling this historic seems inadequate. The turnaround was improbable with a few breaths left in the game, impossible considering the opponent, and miraculous because this is an athlete who had undergone a knee surgery less than a year back, and was fighting two levels below her natural weight. But there we were, witnesses to the extraordinary.

Olympic wrestling unfolds like a whirlwind. Two bouts within ninety minutes, a brief respite, then a third clash a couple of hours later. Vinesh shook off the high from beating Susaki, won her quarter-final 7-5, and semi-final 5-0. Before we could blink, she was an Olympic medallist.

There is a picture clicked in the midst of all this, with Vinesh sprawled like a starfish on Mat B at the Champs-de-Mars Arena, still processing her monumental achievement. It is the image we should take back from Paris.

Credit: Getty Images

Three years back, at Tokyo, she had entered as the world number one, but was suddenly pinned in her quarter-final; eight years back, at Rio, she had suffered an anterior cruciate ligament rupture in the middle of her quarter-final. Vinesh Phogat at the Olympics had been a story of nearly, but not enough. Until the evening of 6th August, 2024.

This had been coming. Three consecutive Commonwealth golds, an Asian Games gold, and an Asian Championships gold speaks of a globally elite wrestler.

Independent India’s first individual medal came via wrestler KD Jadhav in Helsinki, 1952. Seventy-two years later, that thread still holds strong. Aman Sehrawat’s bronze last night extended India’s wrestling medal streak to five consecutive Olympics. In a sport with a rich and burgeoning history in the country, Vinesh Phogat is, objectively, one of our finest. With or without an Olympic medal.

And that, itself, is a huge credit to her. It’s not easy being an athlete in India. It takes a brave kid to pick a non-cricket sport, knowing that neither the ecosystem, nor those in charge of managing it, have your back. Athletic excellence is a completely personal pursuit, where the stench of apathy gets stronger with every step. And no matter how high you go, the air doesn’t get better.

Here’s a little nugget to brighten your day. Before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Abhinav Bindra was sent a pair of boots by the Sports Authority of India. By this time, Bindra was a World Champion and a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist. You’d expect SAI to take care of one of their brightest medal prospects, wouldn’t you? The right boot was size 8, the left size 11.

Or, check out this headline from 2022 - Stadium emptied, athletes asked to leave so that IAS officer can walk his dog.

Vinesh Phogat is born in a family of wrestlers, in a state that has defied national indifference and created a self-sufficient ecosystem to nurture the sport. But here’s the problem, and a rather big one: she is a woman. For all of wrestling’s history in Haryana and India, it was still a male pursuit.

“For Indian women wrestlers, taking up the sport has meant shedding from the very start, not just social convention but intrinsic, physical inhibition. To walk out onto the akhara or competition ring and fight, yes, other women, but also before the eyes of mostly men. In those singlets with nothing but their bare hands and bodies. During the protest, the women wrestlers had to unpeel another layer of themselves, one buried in the past—of fear, guilt and shame.” - Sharda Ugra, here. 

To rise above all this, to become one of the world’s best, to fill your cupboard with medals from Belgrade to Bangkok, to recover from multiple cruciate ligament injuries and storm into to a final, in your third Olympics - this is an orchid in a desert.

**

And that’s still just one part of her story.

Vinesh’s wins over Susaki, Oksana Livach, and Yusneylis Guzman Lopez at Paris, and all her Commonwealth Games and Asiad golds, pale in front of her endurance and defiance over the last eighteen months, in a fight that extends far beyond any wrestling arena.

On January 18th, 2023, Vinesh, alongside Olympic medallists Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik, began a protest in New Delhi against Wrestling Federation of India chief and sitting BJP MP Brij Bhushan Singh, accusing him of rampant sexual exploitation and intimidation. They demanded Brij Bhushan to be sacked and the WFI to be dissolved. When their initial plea got no response, they began a sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar.

The result was seven FIRs against them and a shameful but predictable show of state muscle. At one point, the indifference from the sporting bodies and the government was so crushing, the wrestlers took a trip to Haridwar, ready to immerse their career medals into the Ganga.

In India, children are taught subservience along with the alphabet. A good kid, we are told, listens to their elders with a bowed head and closed eyes, treating their words as gospel and actions as divine. Inquisition and independence is frowned upon, debate considered an affront to authority. At classrooms and homes, workplaces and family gatherings, deification is the unspoken rule.

In Indian sport, association chiefs and ministers become the infallible elders. The ecosystem bends to serve them, granting them unquestioned immunity and complete autonomy. If the boxing contingent does badly, the boxers must be at fault. If they do well, all credit flows to those who sit on velvet cushions, for it was their blessing that transformed these mortals into champions.

Vinesh, Bajrang, and Sakshi had taken on more than just Brij Bhushan Singh. They had challenged Indian sport and governance to look into the mirror, and we don’t like that.

“Today we can stand without fear, look Brij Bhushan in the eye, and tell him — we are not going anywhere,” - Vinesh Phogat, here.

The harsh Delhi winters proved the least of the wrestlers’ trials. They faced the brutality of Delhi Police, endured public smear campaigns against their reputations and careers, and watched in disbelief as a sexual predator was celebrated and protected while those fighting for dignity were cast as criminals.

Amidst all this turmoil, the most defining image of Vinesh Phogat, the person, came from Jantar Mantar. She is seen pinning down her sister Sangeeta Phogat, the Indian tricolour clutched to their torso, as policemen desperately try to drag them into police vans. It’s a tableau of strength, defiance, and resistance.

Credit: Arun Thakur/AFP

The protests continued till mid-June, reaching a fever pitch that drew international attention and forced authorities to take the matter seriously. An investigation was commissioned. The Delhi police chargesheet mentioned interviews with 108 witnesses, of whom 15 - including junior wrestlers, coaches, and referees - corroborated the allegations made by the protesting wrestlers.

The WFI was suspended, Brij Bhushan had to leave, but late last year, the control of WFI was handed over to close aide Sanjay Singh, who celebrated his victory by visiting Brij Bhushan’s residence and garlanding him.

The bout goes on, except this one isn’t bound by time.

Even after enduring everything, including a late run to qualify for the Olympics while recovering from a second ACL injury, even while aiming for the elusive Olympic success at Paris, Vinesh Phogat shouldered a burden far beyond her personal ambitions. She told Bajrang Punia, “I am fighting for the future generation of wrestlers. Not for myself, my career is done and this is my last Olympics. I want to fight for the young women wrestlers who will come, and fight for them so that they can wrestle safely. That's why I was in Jantar Mantar, and that's why I am here.”

**

I was reluctant to write this piece. As a male, born to a privileged, middle-class family, educated in an English medium school, who never played a minute of competitive sport outside school and college, and whose only exposure to wrestling has been through a screen inside an air-conditioned room, I don’t have the first idea what it takes to be Vinesh Phogat. Without walking a mile with her, nevermind in her shoes, what do I know about the fires that forged her?

But, as someone who watches a lot of sport and attaches disproportionate meaning to it, perhaps I am equipped to talk about heroes.

Creating heroes out of our favourites is essentially a childhood impulse. We elevate the extraordinary to the ethereal, craft superhumans from our imaginations and aspirations.

Sachin Tendulkar was mine. I was convinced he existed beyond the realm of the ordinary. The diminutive boy with curly hair, who looked about as old as me, was standing tall to the devilish Glen McGrath and Curtly Ambrose, and demolishing his arch enemy in Shane Warne. Sorcery.

Some find heroes within their families, some in writers and musicians, and some in the school senior who lent you his video game console for an entire summer. But these are the heroes of innocence, shaped by the excitable and uncritical eyes of youth.

Age changes that. Time teaches us context, and context stretches the boundaries of definitions. We realise that the ability to hit a ball or extract emotionally stirring music from a log of wood is but one part of a person. We want more. A person greater than their craft, bigger than their surroundings. 

We don’t forget our childhood heroes, of course, but we begin to learn that everyone comes with rough edges, some too abrasive to ignore. The coat of perfection begins to fray. And we learn that it is much harder to find new heroes in adulthood. There are lots of inspirational figures around, very few real heroes.

When Muhammad Ali passed away in 2016, one of the most incredible things about the pouring tributes was that his boxing became an afterthought. Those who breathed the same air as him spoke of his larger-than-life personality and conviction; those who watched from a distance spoke of his courage and impact on sport. His legacy transcended the ring. He remains a hero because of what he stood for and the way he used his fame, when he could've so easily chosen a rosier path.

Without committing the sin of comparison, Vinesh Phogat is an illustration of what we think of when we use the word ‘hero’. She could’ve lodged her own complaints and walked off, into the supportive embrace of the many organisations funding top Olympic athletes. She would’ve been protected and nourished to take a proper crack at an Olympics medal.

She didn’t. She refused to “shut up and dribble.” She forced us to look, as, for five months, she fought with bare hands against the iron fist of the Indian state machinery, unravelling the grimy underbelly of her sport. There is no medal for this, no one to confer you with recognition and gifts. And tomorrow, when the WFI gets cleaned, it will be those at the top hogging all the limelight, demanding credit for doing the tough bit, and relegating the events of January to June 2023 as a footnote.

It isn’t everyday that you find an Olympic finalist whose athletic achievements become secondary to their identity. Vinesh Phogat will not want to hear it right now, but she has accomplished something far greater than what a round, bulky piece of metal could’ve ever given her. Like Bindra put so aptly, you don’t always need an Olympic medal to be a hero for today and tomorrow’s generation.

Credit: AFP