Vinesh Phogat, Olympian

The first draft of a movie script

Image courtesy NDTV

They call it functional training.

The idea is that you don’t go to the gym to pull and push at machines, lift weights and bulk up – rather, you train your muscles for the tasks they have to perform in your daily life.

In wrestling, your opponent brings force to bear to take you down; you resist until the opportune moment, when you can turn the force back on your opponent and take her down. The image above, of wrestler Vinesh Phogat training on the streets of Delhi with the help of a posse of police personnel, is a teachable example of the value of functional training.

On my desk, I have a calendar of Olympics 2024 events I want to follow, with timings in IST, placed handily so I know when to interrupt my work. Vinesh Phogat’s opening bout in the 50kg category was in the preliminary list I made; I cancelled it after the draw was announced and I learned that she would open against Yui Susaki.

Vinesh, along with Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, had battled with all her might against BJP ‘bahubali’ and alleged serial sex abuser Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and, by extension, the Modi government, and lost.

I didn’t have the heart to watch her lose in the ring, a little over a year after she had lost on the streets.

I had seen the tears flow when, in a press conference early on in the January 2023 protests, Vinesh said they were moved to protest because they had been receiving calls from young girls from Haryana and elsewhere, telling her about ongoing sexual abuse, and that she and her colleagues were protesting on behalf of those who were too weak, too vulnerable, to raise their own voices.

I didn’t have the heart to see her cry one more time.

Because lose she must, I thought, considering who she was pitted against in the very first round.

Susaki was world cadet champion in 2014, defending the title successfully the next two years. She then jumped into the seniors in 2017, won gold at the Paris World Championships that year, and defended the title in 2018 while simultaneously winning the world junior titles in 2018 and 2019.

India had its first glimpse of her skill in 2017 when she won gold in the Asian Championships in New Delhi. She has to her name two Asian Championships, four World Champions golds, and is the defending Olympic champion in the 50kg category.

But perhaps the most startling statistic from the career of this prodigy unearthed and honed by the Japan Olympic Committee Elite Academy is this: she has lost in competitive bouts just thrice in her life. Two of them came in 2010 when she was in the fifth grade, and the third in 2019 in a qualification playoff to make Japan team for the 2019 World Championships.

Against this, Vinesh’s career bio has been written in blood, in sweat, and in tears. Her best chance had come in the Rio Olympics – and ended as the chapters in her story usually end, with her weeping in despair after a potentially career-ending Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tear in her knee, suffered during a quarterfinal bout against China’s Sun Yanan who unintentionally fell on Vinesh’s leg, trapping it at an awkward angle.

In 2021, during the national trials to pick a team for the World Championships, Vinesh pulled out with an injured elbow that required surgery. She came back to win bronze in the 2022 World Championships and gold at that year’s Commonwealth Games. And then her elbow acted up again, necessitating another round of surgery in June 2023 – a few months after leading the protests against then Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

She began training again with a view to a comeback at the Asian Games in Hangzhou — and suffered a second ACL tear, requiring another round of surgery.

She was in rehab when she got the news: Antim Panghal, another wrestler from the Haryana stable who in 2022 had become India’s first ever U-20 World champion (a title she defended in 2023 at Amman), had by virtue of a bronze-winning performance at the 2023 World Championships in Belgrade earned a berth for Paris. In the 53 kg category.

Vinesh had already put on weight in excess of 53 kg while recuperating after surgery. Now, with time running out, she had to shed it all and then some, to earn a chance in the 50kg category.

In wrestling, dropping five to six kilos in a short span of time comes with its own set of problems — your balance is altered, your muscle memory distorted. You need to reprogram your fighting technique almost from scratch. And time was running out.

So what chance did Vinesh have against arguably the most storied female wrestler of all time? David wasn’t this badly mismatched against Goliath.

And so, in my fixtures list, I scratched out Phogat v Susaki off my watch list. I couldn’t bear to see her lose. I couldn’t stand to see her cry, one more time.

I watched the replay next morning. I watched as Vinesh settled into a holding pattern against her storied opponent. I watched Vinesh spin Susaki around each time the Japanese ace tried to launch an attack aimed at her legs. I watched, without understanding the tactic, as Vinesh seemed content to defend, with a passivity that saw her go down one point, then two, as the seconds ticked by.

And though I knew the result, I watched with heart-in-mouth dread as, with Vinesh trailing 0-2, the clock ticked down to the last 10 seconds of the bout – and I damn near jumped out of my chair when, out of nowhere, came that irresistible attack that handed Susaki her first defeat in competitive wrestling after 80 straight wins.

I watched the replay all over again, and it was like watching on a mental split screen.

On the monitor, Vinesh manoeuvring her opponent around the ring, slipping and gliding out of every attack Susaki launched. And on the screen of memory, visuals of half a dozen policewomen trying to bring Vinesh down and the wrestler standing tall against the combined onslaught…

Even in that bout, even knowing that this would be the last Olympics of her career, she didn’t lost sight of that other, larger, battle. Bajrang Punia, who stood with Vinesh and Sakshi Malik throughout their battle against an entrenched sexual abuser, quotes Vinesh as saying:

"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."

“Olympian” is defined as anyone who competes in the quadrennial Games. As in, he is an Olympian, she is an Olympian.

But it is also defined as “befitting, characteristic of, or suggestive of the gods conceived as inhabiting Mount Olympus: lofty.”

Olympian, without the “an”.

Vinesh Phogat is Olympian.

PostScript:

“ख़ुदी को कर बुलंद इतना कि हर तक़दीर से पहले

ख़ुदा बंदे से ख़ुद पूछे बता तेरी रज़ा क्या है”

Sportswriter Jonathan Selvaraj posted that couplet, taken from Vinesh’s Instagram feed a few days back.

Reading List:

Shivani Naik for Indian Express on the tactical changes Vinesh made against Susaki and Shyam Vasudevan for ESPN, also on tactics

“She reminded everyone in India - those who tried to crush her, those who believed in her - that no matter what colour the medal, she will not go quietly. Not now, not ever.” — Sharda Ugra, for ESPN.

A May 2023 piece by Sharda on how India’s women wrestlers turned their bodies into sites of resistance

Sharda again, from December 2023, on the wrestlers who held their ground against the political might of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and also from December, on why champion wrestlers turned citizens fighting for justice is an inspiration for us all.