Vinesh Phogat breaks silence: Everyone outside is treating me like I am a dead thing

when the entire nation is busy welcoming the national Olympic heroes who are back after the soulful triumph, there lies a silent sportsman who returns in solitude. Felicitations are erupting in different corners of the country, the victory is being celebrated immensely, but on the other side of the secluded corner, lies a melancholic dashboard of shattered dreams, Wrestler Vinesh Phogat, who faced heartbreak at the Olympics, pens down her tearful thoughts.

She broke her silence and stated:

 I feel like I am sleeping in a dream and nothing has even begun. I am blank. I don’t know what is happening in life. For the last one week, so much has been going on inside me. It’s a story of two hearts, two minds. I have given everything to wrestling and now is the right time to leave. But on the other hand, by chance I leave and don’t fight, it’ll be a bigger loss for me.

Right now, I really want to focus on my family. But everyone outside is treating me like I am a dead thing. They write anything, they do…. I knew that in India, you fall as fast as you rise. One medal (lost) and everything is finished.

Forget wrestling, let a person be normal. Fellow athletes don’t ask you what went wrong, they tell you what I did wrong. I am shocked that they form their own perspective. Atleast ask me what happened to me on the mat. Why are you putting words in my mouth that I felt a certain way. I didn’t. Sorry.

I was on that mat. I know what I felt and what I didn’t. No one knows it better than me. If what you think you saw was actually how things were, then you could explain the entire meaning of life.

I don’t care about the world. But they still try to break me. I want to analyse my loss. After Rio, I cared about going back to the mat when everyone said I was finished. Why is Tokyo not my decision?

At the Olympics, no athlete is not under pressure. I was also under pressure in Tokyo, in Rio. But I know how to handle it. I could not do it in Rio but here I did. And I will do it again. Vinesh did not lose because of pressure. Before passing judgments, just ask the athlete what went wrong.

I was okay in Tokyo. I prepared for the humidity, I had salt capsules, I drank electrolytes. I just wished this problem would not arise. But when it rains, it pours.

I had a concussion in 2017, since then I have suffered from it. Things become blurry. It has gone down a lot but when my head strikes on anything, it comes back.

Maybe it was that. Maybe it was the blood pressure. Maybe the weight cut. I’m used to salt capsules. They helped a lot. But they did not work in Tokyo where I was alone.

source:

https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/wrestler-vinesh-phogat-interview-tokyo-2020-vinesh-phogat-banned-7451417/