POWER PUFF GIRL
WRESTLER VINESH PHOGAT IS CONFIDENT SHE’LL WIN A MEDAL IN RIO. BUT SHE ONLY WANTS THE SHINY YELLOW KIND
“sirf medal ki bhookh hai,”
the diminutive champion says, choosing yet again to forgo breakfast despite a gruelling, three-hour training session and workout.
Twenty-one-year-old Vinesh Phogat, the youngest of Haryana’s already legendary Phogat Sisters, and the most promising face in the Indian wrestling squad for Rio, very clearly has her eye on ‘gold’. “Medal laungi, nahin
to India wapas nahi lautungi,” she says so unwaveringly confident that you can feel the fire in her belly.
A niece of celebrated wrestling guru Mahavir Phogat, who inspired Aamir Khan’s newest cinematic production Dangal, the sport is etched into her DNA. Vinesh cannot remember a time when she wasn’t grappling both for fun and towards her predestined future as a champion wrestler.
“I was just four, maybe five, years old when tauji forced me into kushti with my siblings and cousins,” she says. That includes her six sisters—Geeta, Babita, Priyanka, Ritu, Vinesh and Sangeeta—and a big brood of 15 cousin brothers.
From deep inside Haryana’s intensely patriarchal, Jat-predominant Bhiwani district, the Phogats are a refreshingly open-minded clan where womenfolk, and younger girls like Vinesh in particular, are actively encouraged to storm men-only bastions.
“I have grappled with more boys than girls at village dangals (wrestling tournaments),” Vinesh says, recounting how she’s come to love the dirt of the akhara, the sweat, the bruises, the hours of hard training and the aching muscles—all that now has her poised at the very threshold of the ultimate sporting glory.
There was a bit of a scare, however, not too long ago. This April, at a World Qualifying Tournament in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Vinesh was found to be 400 grams overweight and disqualified from the event. It seemed for a brief while that her Olympic dream may be over prematurely, but she was let off with a warning, and returned a month later, to the next World Qualifying Tournament in Istanbul, to win a gold medal and book a berth at Rio.
Back at the Sports Authority of India’s facility for wrestlers headed out to Rio, Vinesh is completely focused on her routine and keeping her weight within range of her chosen 48 kg category. “No more ghee for me,” she smiles impishly, alluding to the traditional milk-, butter-, oil-rich food popular with Haryanvi grapplers. Lunch is frugal: a single chapati with a small bowl of runny curd and some daal. “There’s something the matter with my metabolism these days. Even drinking water brings on weight,” she tells you. But nothing can get her to take her eye off the ultimate prize—an Olympic gold medal!
Vinesh has no doubt that she will return with a medal. Her only concern currently is if it will be the shiny yellow kind. Up until now, she ranks the final bout at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games as her toughest. “I felt huge pressure,” she recalls, with a little frown that quickly melts into her signature smile at the memory of the gold medal around her neck.
So how does she do it? Besides the endless hours of training following a punishing fitness regimen, in the end, in the final moments before a big bout, Vinesh always falls back on God: “For me it has always been a bhajan before the bout,” the athlete insists, the “silent prayer helps me keep calm and remain strong.”
“Pray for me,” Vinesh Phogat invariably signs off these days. “Dua mein bhagwan basta hai.”
“For me, it has always been bhajan before a bout.. .a silent prayer that helps me remain calm and strong”