Incredible Vinesh stuns favourite, guns for gold
Vinesh Phogat, a fighter against all odds, stunned wrestling powerhouse Yui Susaki in Paris Olympics, challenging stereotypes and inspiring many.
First, a little eye-opening precursor to the eye-rubbing spectacle.
Yui Susaki, untouched by any rival as an international wrestler, spent a large part of her pre-Games training months camped in Japan’s medal-producing hub of Niigata, a coastal city where Japanese athletes flock to give their Olympic aspiration wings.
Vinesh Phogat spent a good part of last year on the streets of New Delhi, passing nights sleeping in tents and days sloganeering in protests for a cause she believed was worth sacrificing her Olympic dreams for.
The two squared up in the 50kg first round of the Paris Olympics.
“Boom.” That’s how Ibtissem Doudou, an Algerian wrestler in the same 50kg category, described it.
With one move and a handful of seconds to go , she seized the opportunity she’d waited all bout for. Vinesh shook the entire wrestling community at the Champ-de-Mars Arena in Paris. With it, she shook Susaki’s daunting unbeaten pedigree, stamped her own legacy as a fighter, and pricked the conscience of every single person who doubted her as a wrestler over the last couple of years.
She is finished, they said. Oh, she was just getting started.
Towards an Olympic medal, after marching through the semi-finals for a golden shot at glory on Wednesday.
As her first bout on Tuesday ended, 3-2 in the Indian’s favour, Susaki sat confounded and wide-eyed on the mat. Vinesh sprung up and ran around, hugging her coach, slumping to the mat and breaking down. Vinesh, the 29-year-old woman who stood tall against an entire system she believed had wronged the young female wrestlers of her country, had just taken down a Japanese giant.
Susaki is as close to perfection as it gets in wrestling. Like Rafael Nadal on the tennis clay courts of French Open. Even he, however, has been beaten four times in over a hundred matches there. Susaki had not lost a single bout in her international career, her rare defeats coming against fellow Japanese Yuki Irie in their national tournaments. She has every world title at every level — U-15, U-17, U-20, U-23 and senior – as the only wrestler to do so.
In 2022, she won eight bouts scoring 66 points and conceding none. Zero points conceded also defined her Tokyo Olympics on her way to the 50kg gold. She was meant to sweep another one in Paris. Easy-Peasy. Who dare challenge her, let alone beat her? Susaki knows nothing but to win. Vinesh knows nothing but to fight.
“Boom.”
Fight Vinesh has, all through her life and wrestling career. Against her injury-hampered body, against the national federation, against a system that forced her to flip the mat and hit the streets.
Not too long before she charged towards Susaki in the dying seconds of her bout, she was pulled back, dragged and detained during the wrestlers’ stir last year. Vinesh spent days on the streets of the Capital as one of the leading faces protesting against the former Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh accused of allegedly sexual harassing female wrestlers. Almost an entire year of her sporting career was wiped off in those public protests, which were paused and restarted with the justice they sought only getting delayed.
Battles like these, against the collective might of a single powerful person and the army of personnel behind him, can break the spirit of even the most resilient. Vinesh is built of greater grit up in the mind.
The body beneath, though, wouldn’t be ready yet. An injury halted her comeback bid before the Asian Games in 2023. Take two in 2024. She chose to compete in the 50kg Olympic division, cutting her natural body weight of about 55kg drastically while risking an already complex injury rehab phase.
The Olympics were unfinished business. Her Rio Olympics debut met a brutal end and an injured knee. Her Tokyo Olympics outing met an early ouster and questions and criticism about her attitude abound from officials in her own federation.
She wanted to be in Paris at any cost. She got to Paris defying odds and taming obstacles so vast and varied off the mat that the sight of the Japanese stalwart on it paled in comparison.
“Boom”.
Such was its impact that it was felt an hour away in the largest venue of these Games. At the Stade de France. minutes after Vinesh’s bout, Neeraj Chopra lined up and got done with his qualification business in one throw. He was then told of Vinesh’s Susaki stunner.
“This is extraordinary. To beat her is unreal!” Chopra said. “The kind of journey she has been through lately, to rise from that and reach this point giving the level of performance she has, more than the physical hard work, it is her tagda (tough) mindset.”
The perfect postscript. From a terrific champion to the tagda fighter who might become an Olympic champion in her own right on Wednesday night.
