Vinesh Phogat, who retired from wrestling in August after losing out on a gold medal after she was disqualified for being 100 gms overweight, seems to be in the eye of the storm yet again. On Wednesday, the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) served a whereabouts notice to wrestler-turned-politician Vinesh Phogat for failing to be present at the location for her dope test.
National Anti Doping Agency, India is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports, Government of India. NADA India implements the Anti-Doping Program in India and works closely with the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA). The World Anti-Doping Agency is a foundation initiated by the International Olympic Committee.
Athletes registered with NADA’s Registered Testing Pool (RTP), including Vinesh, are required to provide details about their availability for doping tests and also disclose the location where they would be present for sample collection. The athlete’s failure to be present at the pre-decided location for the purpose of sample collection for the dope test invites a whereabouts notice.
According to reports, Vinesh Phogat had disclosed that on the 9th of September, she would be in her home in Kharkhoda village, Sonepat, from where her sample would be collected by NADA. In its notice, NADA said that Vinesh Phogat failed to be present at the location for the purpose of the dope test.
The NADA notice stated: “This formal notice is to inform you of an apparent failure to comply with the whereabouts requirements of the Anti-Doping Rules (ADR), and to invite you to submit any comments before a final decision is made.”
After the notice is served, the athlete, in this case, Vinesh Phogat, must either acknowledge her failure to make herself available for the dope test or provide evidence that she was at the location for the required 60 minutes.
While NADA has served the notice to Phogat, according to an Indian Express report, action is unlikely in the case. For NADA to take action against an athlete, the athlete has to fail to make themselves available for the dope test 3 times in a span of 12 months. This appears to be Phogat’s first failure.
Vinesh retired from the sport following her disqualification from the Paris Olympics, where she made it to the final but was unable to compete in the gold-medal match due to being overweight. After her disqualification from the Olympics, Phogat received a “gold medal” from the Khap Panchayat in Haryana. Soon after, she got back to her politics and joined the “farmers protest” at the Shambhu border.
Recently, Vinesh and fellow wrestler Bajrang Punia joined the Congress party, and she is now running in the upcoming Haryana Assembly elections from the Julana constituency, where she has been actively campaigning.
How the usual suspects had wrongly blamed the Modi government for Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification
Vinesh Phogat originally contested in the 53 kg category. But during the time she was off the mat for more than one-and-a-half years due to injuries and the protests against the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Antim Panghal secured an Olympic quota for India in the 53kg category. She then decided to switch to the lighter weight – 50 kg category – to ensure her place in the Olympics.
Despite not being against the rules, she was allowed to contest in qualifiers in both the 50 kg and 53 kg categories. She lost the qualifying match in the 53 kg category but won in 50kg. Therefore, she had to keep her weight below 50kg because she qualified for the 50 kg category in the Paris Olympics. But she has been struggling to maintain her weight below the allowed limit for several months now. Her weight was around 2.7 kg a day before the finals, and despite various efforts, including cutting hair, shortening clothes, and sitting in the sauna, the weight could not be brought below 50kg.
Therefore, Vinesh Phogat was disqualified on technical grounds, and the govt had no role to play in this.
Pertinently, weight category requirements are rigidly enforced by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the relevant wrestling federations. Notably, the United World Wrestling (UWW) rules say, “If an athlete does not attend or fails the weigh-in, he/she will be eliminated from the competition and ranked last without rank.”
