Gold medalist Sarah Ann Hildebrandt of the USA poses with her medal. | Photo credit: Reuters
American wrestler Sarah Ann Hildebrandt, who won the gold medal in the 50 kg category at the Olympics and Vinesh Phogat was disqualified for being overweight, says she was prepared for chaos on the morning of the summit, but not for the chaos that surrounded the Indian.
Vinesh Phogat 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 fight Hildebrandt for gold, but at the weigh-in on Wednesday morning (August 7, 2024) it was found that he was 100 grams overweight.
“I was prepared for chaos, but that wasn’t on my chaos bingo card,” said Hildebrandt, who defeated Cuban wrestler Yusneylis Guzman Lopez in the final to win the coveted gold.
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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 spot, 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 also lost weight from 55 kg to 50 kg, but she made that decision two years ago. “Losing the weight required a lot of targeted training and discipline,” she said.
“I actually started losing weight for these Games at the end of 2022. I thought to myself, ‘Everything I do from now on will affect (Paris) 2024. So it’s going to be awkward in 2023.’ I’m so happy to say that I had the smoothest weight loss of my life for Paris 2024. It was worth it.”
