India’s Vinesh Phogat disqualified hours before Olympics gold medal match

Heartbreak for India’s Vinesh Phogat, who was disqualified from the women’s 50kg event hours before her gold-medal bout against American Sarah Hildebrand at Olympics.

She became the first Indian women wrestler to reach the final at an Olympics.

The 29-year-old from Haryana was found 100-150 grams over the permissible weight limit hours before the 50-kg category bout.

As per the rules, wrestlers have to show their weight on the morning of the preliminary rounds and the morning of the final.

While she was well within the permissible limit of 50 kg on Tuesday, her weight increased throughout the day, when she went through three bouts.

Despite here valiant efforts, according to Indian Express, she failed to meet the Olympics criteria.

Her coached and support staff even took the extreme route of cutting her hair and trying to draw blood, but she was still found 150 grams above the permissible limit.

According to Article 11 of the United World Wrestling’s rule book, an athlete who doesn’t make the permissible weight cut will be eliminated from the tournament.

“If an athlete does not attend or fail the weigh-in (the 1st or the 2nd weigh-in), he will be eliminated of the competition and ranked last, without rank (Exception: cf. Article 56 – Medical Service Intervention)”