Paris: American wrestler Sarah Ann Hildebrandt, who won the Olympic gold medal bout in the 50 kg category in which Vinesh Phogat was disqualified for being overweight, says she was prepared for chaos on the morning of the summit, but not the chaos that surrounded the Indian.
Vinesh was disqualified and replaced in the Olympic final by Cuban Yusneylis Guzman Lopez. The 29-year-old Indian had defeated Lopez in the semifinals and was due to face Hildebrandt for the gold medal, but was diagnosed as 100 grams overweight at the weigh-in on Wednesday morning.
“I prepared for chaos, but that wasn’t on my chaos bingo card,” said Hildebrandt, who defeated Lopez in the final to take the coveted gold.
Hildebrandt, 30, who won a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics, said she did not notice Vinesh at the weigh-in and thought for a while the Indian had given up.
“(Vinesh) wasn’t at the weigh-in, so I thought, ‘Oh my God, that could be a possibility.’ Then we got the news that she hadn’t made the weight, and we thought she had lost that. So there was a lot of celebrating,” she recalled after the finale.
“It was very strange, like, ‘Oh my God, I just won the Olympics.’ Then an hour later, they said, ‘You didn’t win the Olympics.’ I thought, ‘Oh, that’s very strange.’ So I had to reset. I took a nap, woke up and it was like a fever dream.”
Vinesh, who dropped down to the 50kg class earlier this year to stay in contention for an Olympic championship, resorted to desperate measures to qualify for the fight, starving himself, abstaining from fluids and staying up all night to work up a sweat.
But that was not to be, as she still did not reach the finish line and was eventually so dehydrated that she had to be connected to an IV in a polyclinic in the Olympic Village.
Hildebrandt had also lost weight from 55 kg to 50 kg, but she had made this decision two years ago.
“Losing the weight required a lot of focused education and discipline,” she said.
“I started the weight reduction plan for these Games at the end of 2022. I thought to myself, ‘Everything I do from now on will affect (Paris) 2024. So 2023 is going to be uncomfortable.’
“I’m so happy to say that I had the smoothest cut of my life for Paris 2024. It was worth it.”
Published 08. August 2024, 07:15 IS
