‘Your dream, my courage’: Vinesh returns to wrestling

More than 16 months after Haryana’s three-time Olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat announced her retirement after the Paris fiasco saying “your dream, my courage, everything had shattered” on August 8 last year, the 31-year-old grappler on Friday announced her return to wrestling. She said, “I still love this sport, and I still want to compete.”

“People kept asking if Paris was the end. For a long time, I didn’t have the answer. I took time to understand the weight of my journey – the highs, the heartbreaks, the sacrifices, the version of me the world never saw,” read an introspective post on her official X account.

‘Still loved the sport, wanted to compete

She added that somewhere in that reflection, she found the truth that she still loved the sport and still wanted to compete. Saying that she was stepping back towards Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, Ms. Phogat, now a Congress MLA from Julana, said “the fire never left”, and “it was only buried under exhaustion and noise”.

On the verge of making a history, Ms. Phogat, had to return empty-handed after she was disqualified from the Paris Olympics for being around 100 gm overweight after reaching the 50 kg final. She later made an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a joint Silver medal, but it was dismissed.

Champion’s welcome

On August 17 last, she returned India to a champion’s welcome amid allegations of a conspiracy against her, with several khap leaders, including Palam 360 Khap chief Surender Solanki from Delhi, and Congress’s Rohtak MP Deepender Hooda, along with Olympic wrestlers Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik being in attendance to welcome her. She later took a plunge into electoral politics a few months later, contesting and winning from Haryana’s Julana assembly constituency on the Congress symbol in the Assembly elections in October last year.

In a detailed post expressing her gratitude towards those who had helped her in her journey as a wrestler, 10 days after her retirement announcement last year, Ms. Phogat, however, had hinted at her possible return to the mat, saying, “maybe under different circumstances, I could see myself playing till 2032, because the fight in me and wrestling in me will always be there”.

Coming from a celebrated family of women wrestlers from Haryana’s Bilali village, Ms. Phogat, a ten-time gold medallist in various International tournaments, had competed in the 48 kg category at her first Olympics in 2016 at Rio de Janeiro, but her campaign was tragically cut short by an injury

Ms. Phogat married fellow wrestler Somvir Rathee and became a mother to a baby boy in July this year. Announcing her return to the sport, Ms. Phogat wrote that she would not be walking alone this time with her son joining her team. She called him her “biggest motivation” and “little cheerleader” on the road to the LA Olympics.