CHENNAI: In a dramatic turnaround of events, one of India’s most decorated wrestlers, Vinesh Phogat has announced her intention to come out of retirement on Friday. She has posted on her social media accounts that the fire is still burning and she would take one final shot at an Olympic medal at the LA 28 Olympic Games.
Though the announcement seemed sudden, the wrestler had hinted comeback when she moved to Bengaluru with her just-born child for training. Vinesh along with her husband Somvir Rathee welcomed a baby boy into the family in July and soon after she started fitness sessions at Pratap Sports School, Kharkhoda in Sonepat, Haryana.
Om Prakash Dahiya, Vinesh’s childhood coach, said his ward has already moved to Bengaluru to train. “She is already in Bengaluru. Once again, the goal is to win an Olympic medal. She is accompanied by a woman there as she needs someone to take care of her son and training,” Dahiya said. As always, Olympic Gold Quest is supporting her. Vinesh, multiple World Championships, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games medallist, suffered heartbreaks at the Olympics not once but thrice.
From her Olympic debut at the 2016 Rio Games where she was stretchered out after suffering a knee injury on the mat to unfathomable loss at the 2021 Tokyo Games to disqualification hours before the gold medal bout for being 50 grams overweight at the 2024 Paris Games, the 31-year-old somehow always had a torturous outing at the world’s biggest stage.
But the road to glory will not be easy. Vinesh, who contested and won from Haryana’s Julana constituency during the Assembly elections last year, has to start from the scratch. She was an Indian Railway employee but resigned before joining politics. She may have to earn her berth first in district and then state squad before making it to the Haryana team for the next nationals in 2026. It needs to be seen in which weight category she would compete. At Paris Olympics, Vinesh had competed in 50kg.
'I still love this sport. I still want to compete'
Throwing light on her decision, Vinesh in her post said, "People kept asking if Paris was the end. For a long time, I didn't have the answer. I needed to step away from the mat, from the pressure, from the expectations, even from my own ambitions. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to breathe."
"I took time to understand the weight of my journey — the highs, the heartbreaks, the sacrifices, the versions of me the world never saw. And somewhere in that reflection, I found the truth, I still love this sport. I still want to compete."
The Haryana wrestler was on the verge of creating history but was disqualified hours before her gold medal bout in Paris last year. She then appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), seeking a joint silver medal, but the verdict remained unchanged, leading her to announce her retirement.
Earlier, Vinesh had become the first woman wrestler from the country to win a medal at the World Championships twice. She won a bronze medal at the 2019 Worlds to qualify for the Tokyo Games and then repeated the feat finishing third at the 2022 edition. Besides, the 31-year-old Vinesh had clinched a bronze and a gold at the 2014 and 2018 Asian Games respectively apart from bagging three consecutive gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, 2018 and 2022.
Despite boasting a successful career that saw her winning numerous accolades, the Olympic medal is missing from her trophy cabinet. "In that silence, I found something I'd forgotten 'the fire never left'. It was only buried under exhaustion and noise. The discipline, the routine, the fight... it's in my system. No matter how far I walked away, a part of me stayed on the mat. So here I am, stepping back toward LA28 with a heart that's unafraid and a spirit that refuses to bow. And this time, I'm not walking alone my son is joining my team, my biggest motivation, my little cheerleader on this road to the LA Olympics," she added.
A WFI official said Vinesh mailed the federation informing about her decision on Friday morning. "She mailed her decision to the WFI, Sports Authority of India and the sports ministry. The WFI welcomes her back to the fold," said the WFI official.
Vinesh had a frosty relationship with the WFI and all went downhill when she along with Olympic medallists Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik launched a movement against former president of the federation, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, accusing him of sexual harassment. She had quite a few showdowns with the federation in the first phase of her career. And as she said in her comeback note — the fire never left — the second phase can also be expected to be fiery.
