Rules are meant to be broken!

Wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification from Olympics for being 100 gms overweight, that too after making weight every single round until the match for gold, was inhuman. The dismissal of her plea for a joint silver is cruel! Twice this had happened to her–last time being 400 gms. She announced her retirement because she was in so much pain–to work so hard for so long, to be so close to gold and then lose to your own body and the rules?

While staying within weight category is essential for a fair wrestling round, do 100 gms give a player any advantage over the other. She lost 2.4 kgs overnight–not eating, not drinking, sweating it out in sauna, even cutting her hair and shortening her clothes. What else did they expect? She was so dehydrated after the weigh in and disqualification that she had to get a drip!

Should she have come to the game nude to make weight?

It is one thing to have rules and another to have them so tight that there is no breathing space for humanity. The bigger problem is that there are only 6 weight categories for women wrestling–men have 10. Since only one person per category is allowed, you have squeeze in somehow, even if it means going hungry all night long to make place in a lesser-weight category.

Olympics talks about health and wellbeing of players but if 100 gm can get you disqualified in the final round, imagine an athlete’s mental condition, worrying about weight every day all night until they collapse of hunger and thirst!

Shouldn’t there be some room for extra weight so athletes can eat?