Vinesh Phogat has won three Commonwealth Games gold medals, an Asian Games title and two World Championship bronzes, and she came within one bout of Olympic gold in Paris in 2024. On the first day of the 50 kg event she beat Japan’s Yui Susaki, the reigning Olympic champion, who had never lost an international bout. The next morning she was disqualified from the final for weighing about 100 grams over the limit. Few moments in Indian sport have caused such anguish.
Name: Vinesh Phogat | Born: 25 August 1994, Balali, Haryana | Sport: Wrestling | Event: Women’s freestyle (48 kg, 50 kg, 53 kg)
The Phogat family
Vinesh comes from Balali village in Haryana and from the best-known wrestling family in India. She is a cousin of Geeta and Babita Phogat and was trained, like them, by her uncle Mahavir Singh Phogat, who taught the girls of the family to wrestle at a time when the sport was almost closed to women in the region.
She grew into a quick, aggressive wrestler with a sharp attack on the legs and a refusal to give up ground. By her late teens she was competing for India at senior level.
Commonwealth and Asian titles
Her first major gold came at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in the 48 kg category. She won bronze at the Asian Games in Incheon later that year. On the Gold Coast in 2018 she won Commonwealth gold again, this time at 50 kg.
Months later, at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, she beat Japan’s Yuki Irie 6-2 in the 50 kg final. She was the first Indian woman wrestler to win Asian Games gold. In Birmingham in 2022 she completed a hat-trick of Commonwealth titles at 53 kg.
She also won bronze at the World Championships in Nur-Sultan in 2019 and in Belgrade in 2022, both at 53 kg. In 2019 she became the first Indian to be nominated for a Laureus World Sports Award.
Olympic setbacks
The Olympics were cruel to her twice before Paris. At Rio 2016 she was forced to retire from her 48 kg quarter-final against China’s Sun Yanan with a serious knee ligament injury and was carried off the mat. At Tokyo 2020, now at 53 kg, she beat Sweden’s Sofia Mattsson in her first bout but lost her quarter-final to Belarus’s Vanesa Kaladzinskaya by fall.
Paris 2024
For Paris, Vinesh dropped to 50 kg. Her first-round opponent was Yui Susaki, the Tokyo champion, and Vinesh beat her in the final seconds of the bout in one of the biggest upsets of the Games. She then beat Ukraine’s Oksana Livach and Cuba’s Yusneylys Guzman to reach the final and guarantee at least a silver medal.
Overnight she worked to make the weight, but at the weigh-in on the morning of the final she was found to be about 100 grams over the limit and was disqualified. Under the rules she lost her place on the podium altogether. She appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a shared silver, and the appeal was dismissed on 15 August 2024. She had already announced her retirement on 8 August.
Politics and a return to the mat
Vinesh had been one of the leaders of the 2023 protest against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, then head of the Wrestling Federation of India. After Paris she entered politics. She joined the Congress in September 2024 and won the Julana seat in the Haryana assembly election on 8 October 2024 by 6,015 votes. Her son was born in July 2025.
In December 2025 she announced that she was coming back, with the aim of competing at a fourth Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028. The return has not been smooth. In May 2026 the federation ruled her ineligible for a ranking event, citing retirement and anti-doping rules. After a court order she took part in the trials for the 2026 Asian Games at 53 kg. She won two bouts, including a 7-6 win from 0-5 down against Nishu Kumari, but lost her semi-final 4-6 to Meenakshi Goyat and missed out on the Games. In September 2026 the Delhi High Court refused her interim relief to enter the trials for the World Championships.
Career record and honours
- Olympic Games: reached the 50 kg final, Paris 2024 (disqualified at weigh-in); quarter-finalist, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020
- World Championships: bronze, 53 kg, Nur-Sultan 2019 and Belgrade 2022
- Asian Games: gold, 50 kg, Jakarta 2018 (first Indian woman wrestler to win Asian Games gold); bronze, 48 kg, Incheon 2014
- Commonwealth Games: gold, 48 kg, Glasgow 2014; gold, 50 kg, Gold Coast 2018; gold, 53 kg, Birmingham 2022
- Laureus World Sports Award nominee, 2019
- Arjuna Award, 2016
- Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, 2020
- Member of the Haryana Legislative Assembly for Julana, elected 2024
