India wrestler Vinesh Phogat was disqualified from the women’s 50kg wrestling competition on Wednesday after failing to make the weight cut ahead of the gold-medal match.
“Despite the best efforts by the team through the night, she weighed in a few grams over 50kg this morning. No further comments will be made by the contingent at this time. The Indian team requests you [to] respect Vinesh’s privacy. It would like to focus on the competitions at hand,” the Indian Olympic Association said in a statement.
Vinesh was supposed to take on USA’s Sarah Ann Hildebrandt in the final later on Wednesday.
The development means Vinesh will not be awarded the silver medal either. According to the weigh-in rules by United World Wrestling, “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.”
The 29-year-old Vinesh had become the first Indian woman wrestler to reach an Olympic final in wrestling. Sakshi Malik, the only other woman wrestler to win an Olympic medal for India, had clinched a bronze medal at Rio 2016.
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