When Rajpal Phogat heard complaints about his daughter, Vinesh, beating up boys who messed with her in school, he did not scold her. Instead, he felt proud that his daughter was no less than a boy. He, like his more illustrious elder brother Mahavir Singh Phogat, a former wrestler and Dronacharya awardee, wanted his daughters to take to the mat. “My father had big dreams for us,” said Vinesh in an interview with Virender Sehwag (#UmeedIndia, The EPIC Channel). “He used to say that, one day, his daughters would wrestle professionally and he would watch from the crowd and cheer on. Unfortunately, when Vinesh was eight, a relative shot dead her father over a land dispute. “As a child, I used to be my mother’s pet; I went wherever she went and clung to her all the time,” said the 25-year-old from the Bhiwani district of Haryana. “I did not have that sort of attachment with my father, but he was fond of me. When he died, I was too young to understand what to feel, so the loss did not affect me a lot then. But, whenever my mother cried over his death, I would feel bad. Now that I am older, I understand that pain; I miss my father’s presence. I sometimes wish he was there to watch me during competitions.”
Mahavir took the baton from his younger brother and made it his mission to make Vinesh and her sister Priyanka wrestlers. He trained them alongside his own daughters Geeta and Babita. “I was good at wrestling but I wasn’t too keen on pursuing it,” she said. But Mahavir was adamant.
Vinesh remembers how she, her sister and her cousins were woken up at 4am on a freezing morning when she was only six. Mahavir made the girls run a couple of laps on the field, paired them up and told them to wrestle. Every day, the girls were made to practise for six hours and Mahavir would beat them if they were disobedient. The villagers nicknamed him ‘Devil’ and were scared to interfere in his matters. “He wanted an Olympic medal,” said Vinesh. “We did not even know what it was. We used to wonder, ‘Who is this Olympics?’ We just wanted the Olympics to show up fast so that we could get a break from my uncle’s strict training.
“Geeta and Babita got a lot of cruel comments when they initially started training, especially about their shorts. I was too young at that time, but my mother used to tell me that the women in the neighbourhood passed rude comments on what I wore. I used to get angry and ask my mother to bring those women in front of me.”
Initially, the girls wrestled each other in a mud pit that Mahavir had dug for them. He also took them to compete against boys. Slowly, as the girls got better, Mahavir got them training mats and other equipment. He planned their diet and fitness regime, made sure they did it regularly and, if they did not, made sure they got punished. “My uncle asked us to keep our hair short. We all had the katora cut,” Vinesh said in the interview at NDTV’s Yuva Conclave, and broke into a laugh. “He believed that long hair might
distract us and we may prioritise our looks more than our training.” Mahavir got the man who trimmed buffaloes’ hair to cut off the girls’ long, silky hair.
According to Vinesh, Aamir Khan’s movie Dangal showed a softer version of Mahavir’s personality. “I have never seen him so soft,” she said at the conclave. Although many questioned the absence of her role in the movie, Vinesh says she prefers to be known as a successful wrestler rather than a movie character. “I want to make a name for myself in wrestling,” she said. “When people talk about wrestling, I want my name to come up in the conversation.”
Interestingly, Vinesh was not her first name. “It used to be Anita,” she said at the Ekamra Sports Literary Festival in Odisha in 2018. “My uncle changed it just before I got into wrestling competitions. He found that my date of birth in the school records was wrong, so when he went to rectify that, he changed my name, too. I don’t know where he got this name from, but from then on it has been Vinesh.”
And that is the name in lights now. “Thanks to my uncle’s strict diet and fitness regime, I was able to create an identity for myself in wrestling,” said Vinesh, who last year became the first female wrestler from Indian to win gold at the Asian Games. She beat Japan’s Yuki Irie in the women’s 50kg freestyle event in Jakarta to claim the medal. She also became the first Indian athlete to be nominated at the Laureus World Sports Awards. “I want to make girls understand that if they put their mind to anything, they can conquer it,” she said. “Women have the power to make an impact. Before, people in my village used to mourn the birth of a girl. Now, whenever a girl is born, her parents say, ‘Let’s make her a wrestler’. These are small steps to a better future.”
Her latest achievement was a maiden World Championship medal in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, which sealed her spot at the Tokyo Olympics. “In 2016, when I was stretchered off the mat after suffering a knee dislocation during my quarterfinal bout in Rio Olympics, I thought I would never be able to compete again,” she said. “It was what they call a career-threatening injury. The initial few weeks were hard. All I did was cry, sleep and then cry some more. I had worked so hard throughout that year [and had] multiple wins. And then, just when I was about to reach the pinnacle of my dream, it all fell like a house of cards.”
Vinesh’s trainers and physiotherapists asked her to relax and do things that made her happy. “I went out with my friends, tried new eateries and even started painting. I did not know how to paint, but I did it anyway and I think it helped me a lot,” she said. The break was necessary as she could unwind and get back up stronger. According to a write-up by Sonia Faleiro in The Economist’s ideas, culture and lifestyle magazine, 1843, she used her enforced rest to break old ways. It was during that time that she acquired a professional coach, Wöller Ákos, a Hungarian wrestler who is now her full-time coach. She also decided to get a physiotherapist, a nutritionist, a psychologist and a sparring partner, all of whom are funded by Olympic Gold Quest, a non-profit organisation. The foundation is said to have spent around $400,000 to give Vinesh the best training.
“I learnt a lot about me during my period of recovery,” she said. “I learnt a lot about wrestling, too. I developed a crazy love for the sport that time. Now when I get an injury, I know for a fact that I will get back up soon. Sometimes, I even laugh at small injuries. If I was able to recover then, I will now. I also surround myself with people who believe in my dream. I have this hope that Tokyo is mine.”
Her mother, Premlata, however, did not take her injury too well. “My mother almost stopped watching my bouts,” she said. “She is scared that I might break a bone again. Even if she watches, she keeps shouting, ‘Leave her leg! Don’t break it’. She keeps praying for me all the time. After all, she is my mother, it is inevitable that she would be concerned. However, I think it her prayers helped me recover fast.”
Premlata may be concerned, but she is definitely not faint-hearted, at least that is not what author Sonia Faleiro thinks in the story she wrote in 1843 after she met Vinesh’s family. It was tradition for Hindu widows to end up marrying their brother-in-law or move in with their family. But Premlata declined the offer; she was confident she could take care of her children. And that is exactly what she did. Family members tried to change her mind, especially after she was diagnosed with uterine cancer, months after her husband’s death. But Premlata was headstrong and decided to break all the notions people had about single parenting.
They had four buffaloes at the time and Premlata fed her children milk, yoghurt and butter. She also started a micro-finance business with her husband’s pension. Not just that, she also survived cancer. “My mother stayed strong for her children and because of her, I am strong,” said Vinesh.
Even when it comes to sports, most people think that women are weak and their training is different from that of men. Vinesh, however, says women train as much as men. “Many junior girls come and ask me how I train or compete during my periods,” she said. “I don’t think it is a big deal. The menstrual cycle is part of every woman’s life and nobody should stop doing their routine because of it. I don’t think it should be an excuse to not train or compete. On the contrary, I think we should be proud that it happens to us and that nature is dependent on us; isn’t that empowering enough?” she said in an episode of Pathbreakers by the YouTube channel Sportswallah.
That Vinesh has always believed in herself was evident following her recent win in Kazakhstan. After the match, she told the media that she altered her trainer’s strategy for the key Olympic qualification match. Akos had told her to stay away from the American Sarah Ann Hildebrandt, block her right arm and protect the legs. “I did the exact opposite. I stayed solid in defence and lured her into leg attacks to wear her out,” Vinesh said. The defensive play worked. Vinesh defeated Sarah 8-2 in the second repechage round. “I knew how much strength she had compared to mine,” she said. “She got hold of my right leg five times, but I used all of my upper-body strength to not let Sarah take advantage.”
Vinesh had beaten Sarah, the US’s best wrestler, at the Dan-Kolov tournament in Bulgaria, immediately after switching to the 53kg category. It was her victory over Rio Olympic bronze medallist Sofia Mattson that was a major confidence booster. “Defeating Sofia was a major win for me. Now, I have this hope that whatever I lost in Rio, I will take it back in Tokyo,” she said.
For this, Vinesh recently went to Bulgaria for a high-altitude endurance training stint of 13 days. The training was at the Belmeken High Mountain sports complex, located 2,050m above sea level. “Conditions in Bulgaria were tough for me, but it was a valuable experience as well,” she said. “We used to do routine physical exercises, especially mountain hiking. I also did hill running and, in the evening, I worked out at the gym,” she said.
Akos planned this trip to strengthen her core and lower body. High-altitude training is said to increase the number of red blood cells in the body. The science is quite simple. At high altitudes, there is less oxygen, which means that there is less oxygen in the blood. So, the body compensates by making more RBCs. When the person returns to lower altitudes, those extra RBCs carry more oxygen to the tissues. Many experts say it is a natural way to boost performance. “It is different from how I used to train before,” said Vinesh. “Even my diet has changed. I used to eat less before, but now I am made to consume more carbohydrates. My weight is around 56kg now and I will bring it down to 53kg before the Olympics.”
Vinesh has kept her private life private, so it was a surprise for her Instagram followers when, in April 2017, she posted a picture with national-level wrestler Somvir Rathee and wrote a long note for him—“My best friend, the love of my life and someone I think is the best person to spend my life with. When everyone took a step back, you were the only one who stepped up and told me that your belief in me was just as strong, if not stronger! Thank you for being the person that you are and the person you are making me into with your love and understanding.”
In December 2018, after seven years of being together, they tied the knot in Haryana. The story, fit for a movie, started when Somvir was 18; he saw Vinesh for the first time. According to 1843 magazine, she was eating ice cream after a competition. But it took the shy Somvir another two years before he gathered the courage to tell her anything. He, also from Haryana, did not want anything to hurt Vinesh’s career and they made sure that nobody knew. “People say that female athletes lose their focus after marriage; I think it is ridiculous,” said Vinesh. “Somvir came into my life way before our marriage; he has been supporting me through my wrestling journey. I sometimes feel like he invests too much time and effort on me simply because he believes in my dreams and wants me to make a mark in this sport. In this process, he sometimes, forgets himself.”
The couple did not even go on a honeymoon post their wedding. “I went for training two days after my wedding,” she said. “Even Somvir felt that I should focus on my training.”
However, Vinesh does want to travel and visit places with her family sometime in the future. “I have been to several countries for wrestling matches, but our schedules are so tight that we never get to go around sight-seeing,” she said. “The funny thing is, I have not even seen the Taj Mahal. One time, when we had a competition in Paris, I had made plans with the other wrestlers to visit the Eiffel Tower. But the day before we planned our trip, I slept in my room with the windows open. The next day, I felt sick and we had to cancel our trip.” Right now, however, her sole focus is the Olympics. “Travel plans can wait,” she said. For her, the majesty of the Eiffel Tower or Taj Mahal is nothing compared to the feeling that the Olympic gold medal would bring her. After all, what is more glorious than victory? n
At a glance
Your favourite actor
Ranveer Singh and Akshay Kumar
A song that you constantly hum
Sometimes when I practise or when I work hard and don’t get medals, I sing ‘Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana’. The lyrics of the song are so encouraging.
Are you a foodie?
I eat healthy. But one of my favourite dishes is my mother’s roti and palak bhurji.
Do you like pets?
I have never had pets. But if I were to keep one, I’d want a cat. I am scared of it, but also like it.
Your strength
My mother is my strength. I share everything with her, my good times and bad.
Weakness
I get angry and frustrated very fast. But now, I am learning how to control it.
Your biggest wish
To win the Olympic gold and then win some more.
Favourite sport apart from wrestling
Since childhood, I have been fascinated with tennis. Something about it just amuses me. I still feel I can do well in tennis.
Your biggest learning
Stay focussed no matter what.
Are you planning on trying your hand in MMA?
Never. I am going to wrestle as long as I can. MMA is not something that I’d ever go for.
A wrestler you look up to
Japanese freestyle wrestler Kaori Icho. She is ten-time World Champion and four-time Olympic champion.
Something you would like to do in the future, other than wrestling?
I want to write a book on me. I have not started writing, but I think about it a lot.
With the number of rapes increasing by the day, how do you think a girl should defend herself?
By God’s grace, I have never experienced anything like that. Probably because people know that I am a wrestler and they are scared of me. But in the case of a non-athletic girl, I would say use your long nails and scratch, scratch, scratch!
What do you feel when you are in competition with your sisters?
When we are on the mat, we are not sisters; I only see an opponent. As a matter of fact, I don’t even hear cheers when I get into my zone.
Wrestling styles
Opponents from different countries have varied styles, says Vinesh. Here are some of her observations:
Japanese: Wrestlers tend to gravitate more to the left.
Indians: More lower-body attacks.
Europeans: Stronger on the right side.
Russians: Aggressive attacks; both upper and lower body.
Vinesh’s style: “I am more into attacking than defending. My leg attacks are pretty strong. I think I am an aggressive wrestler.”
Fitness regime
Vinesh says her new fitness training is not boring as her coach changes the plan every 15 days. Wöller also changes the sequence of the training every day
Morning: Workout at the gym, running and high-intensity exercises
Evening: Weight training or mat training, long sprints
The plan also alternates between core workouts and cardio
Wednesday, Saturday evening and Sunday: No training
Key rule: According to Vinesh, wrestlers don’t jog, they only sprint. “Running at maximum speed increases our stamina and also aids in pumping more blood,” she says.