Vinesh Phogat breaks silence: I feel like I am sleeping in a dream and nothing has even begun. I am blank. I don’t know what is happening in life. For the last one week, so much has been going on inside me. It’s a story of two hearts, two minds. I have given everything to wrestling and now is the right time to leave. But on the other hand, by chance I leave and don’t fight, it’ll be a bigger loss for me.
Right now, I really want to focus on my family. But everyone outside is treating me like I am a dead thing. They write anything, they do…. I knew that in India, you fall as fast as you rise. One medal (lost) and everything is finished.
Forget wrestling, let a person be normal. Fellow athletes don’t ask you what went wrong, they tell you what I did wrong. I am shocked that they form their own perspective. At least ask me what happened to me on the mat. Why are you putting words in my mouth that I felt a certain way. I didn’t. Sorry.
I was on that mat. I know what I felt and what I didn’t. No one knows it better than me. If what you think you saw was actually how things were, then you could explain the entire meaning of life.
I don’t care about the world. But they still try to break me. I want to analyse my loss. After Rio, I cared about going back to the mat when everyone said I was finished. Why is Tokyo not my decision?
At the Olympics, no athlete is not under pressure. I was also under pressure in Tokyo, in Rio. But I know how to handle it. I could not do it in Rio but here I did. And I will do it again. Vinesh did not lose because of pressure. Before passing judgments, just ask the athlete what went wrong.
I was okay in Tokyo. I prepared for the humidity, I had salt capsules, I drank electrolytes. I just wished this problem would not arise. But when it rains, it pours.
I had a concussion in 2017, since then I have suffered from it. Things become blurry. It has gone down a lot but when my head strikes on anything, it comes back.
Maybe it was that. Maybe it was the blood pressure. Maybe the weight cut. I’m used to salt capsules. They helped a lot. But they did not work in Tokyo where I was alone.
I was reducing weight. I was my own physio and I was the wrestler. I was assigned a physio from the shooting team. She did not understand my body. My sport has very specific demands. She couldn’t help me with what my regular physio used to. Last day, when I am reducing weight, am I supposed to explain things to her on how things are done in wrestling, or focus on myself? It’s unfair on both of us.
On the day of the bout, I was not getting the feel. After the weight cut, I warmed up, I still didn’t feel it.
I had not eaten the day before the bout. I drank some nutrition but I felt anxious. I woke up with a feeling of vomiting but I could not. I was in pain. There was nothing in my body. Ultimately I did vomit. On the bus ride to the stadium, I called Purnima (my physio) asking her desperately what I could do.
Since I got COVID first time (August 2020), I can’t digest protein. One year and I have had no protein in my body. It doesn’t stay inside. When I came back from Kazakhstan after Asian Championships, I fell ill again. I was tested positive COVID for the second time which I contracted in Almaty. I recovered and flew to Bulgaria. A few days later, my family back home tested positive.
Imagine how I have gotten back to this stage of the Olympics. Five years.
When these things have happened, why will I stay with the Indian team? They were tested everyday for seven days. I wasn’t. What if I got it on the flight and infected them? I was, in fact, thinking about them and wanted to stay away for 2-3 days to be sure that they were not at risk. What’s the big deal? After 2-3 days I was going to join them and even began training with Seema. So there’s no question of me not being a team-player.
I always invest in the team. I train with the same girls. Now I am going away, I feel worse than them.
I am an emotional person. When in 2019 I changed weight, I was diagnosed with depression for three months. I was in Spain. I felt something was wrong. I never slept. For days I would be awake.
I came back to Lucknow, it became worse. If a coach even spoke in a slightly high tone, I would start crying. As an athlete, the mental pressure is so much that we are always on that thin line. When it crosses, we are done.
That time I was so bad that I was training and suffering. I was injured in Asian Championships. That is when it struck me that this will finish me. I spoke to a psychologist. I needed emotional support so I needed to speak up. Everyone in the family helped me but I can’t express everything, what is going on inside. I told my psychologist that I am very emotional and can cross that thin line.
Do you think doing meditation and talking to a psychologist is enough? Nothing is enough. Only we know.
Now, I find it difficult to cry. I have zero mental strength right now. Like they did not even let me regret my loss. Everyone was ready with their knives.
Atleast don’t abuse the people on the team because of my result. Who can feel the pain more than the wrestler who has worked so hard mentally and physically.
And which team did I not train with? No one asked me what I did or who I was with. If you were really expecting a gold, then shouldn’t my long term physio Purnima have been there? (My coach) Woller travelled with me, to help me, stayed with me in Lucknow when his one-year-old son was in Budapest. When COVID hit, he continued training and motivated me when the Olympics was postponed. He did not care about his personal life. How can you blame that person?
Woller did everything. He didn’t stop crying when I lost. His wife didn’t stop crying. She’s a 4-time Olympian, and was only of help to my training being from a higher weight category. I’ve won these last three years with the same support staff.
I will never accept that I was under stress or mentally disturbed. I have become emotional because of my journey . Someone needs to understand that I began wrestling without anyone’s permission. Support us but don’t tell me what to do. I worked hard. I invested myself. Money? I’ll give you money, wrestle and give me results. I am a tough person and someone who wants to give herself pain and if I can break to this level, imagine what happens to athletes who return empty handed. If someone is not strong, imagine.
I never said make me a contender for gold. I am wrestling for myself and I was the first to feel awful after losing, but let me do it. Leave me alone.
I don’t know when I will return (to the mat). Maybe I won’t. I feel I was better off with that broken leg. I had something to correct. Now my body is not broken, but I’m truly broken.
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Abhi