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While details of the events in the night before her second official weigh-in ahead of the 50kg freestyle final continue to make news, her coach, Woller Akos, reportedly commented that he feared for Vinesh’s life while she was trying to cut the last few grams before her weigh-in, but eventually fell 100gm short and was disaqualified.
According to a report in The Indian Express, Akos posted his comments on Facebook and later deleted it.
The newspaper report quoted Akos from the now-deleted post, which was written in Hungarian: “After the semi-final, 2.7 kg of excess weight was left. We exercised for one hour and twenty minutes, but 1.5 kg still remained. Later, after 50 minutes of sauna, not a drop of sweat appeared on her. There was no choice left, and from midnight to 5:30 in the morning, she worked on different cardio machines and wrestling moves, about three-quarters of an hour at one go, with two-three minutes of rest. Then she started again.”
Akos, according to the report, further wrote that Vinesh “collapsed” before recovering to be in the sauna again.
“She collapsed,” the coach recalled. “But somehow we got her up, and she spent an hour in the sauna. I don’t intentionally write dramatic details, but I only remember thinking that she might die”.
The post also included details from a conversation between Akos and Vinesh, after she was discharged from the hospital in Paris.
“We had an interesting conversation that night, returning from the hospital,” the coach wrote. “Vinesh Phogat said, ‘Coach, don’t be sad because you told me that if I find myself in any difficult situation and need extra energy, I should think that I beat the best woman wrestler (Yui Susaki of Japan in Round of 16) in the world. I achieved my goal; I proved that I am one of the best in the world. We have proved that the gameplans work. Medals, podiums are just objects. Performance cannot be taken away’.”
