UPDATE: Vinesh Phogat was later disqualified from the 2024 Paris Olympics after failing to make weight on the morning of her gold medal bout.
A long, slow walk from Champs de Mars Arena, the Olympic wrestling venue, will lead to a group of female statues in the heart of the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris's most popular park. They are called the "Reinnes de France et Femme illustres" (the 'Queens of France and famous women') and feature saints, regents and warriors.
There's Anne of Austria, Margaret of Anjou and Louise of Savoy; Joan of Arc was there too before they moved her into the Louvre.
Now they should really make room for Vinesh of India.
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If Paris 2024 must find an exemplar in its push for gender parity, respect and inclusion they need look no further than this fighter of fire, ice and unshakeable belief. It is what has brought Vinesh Phogat into the gold medal round at the Paris Olympics. She reminded everyone in India - those who tried to crush her, those who believed in her - that no matter what colour the medal, she will not go quietly. Not now, not ever. Absolutement.
The Olympics was always meant to be the stage for this most gifted wrestler from the Phogat family but it had so far been an unforgiving odyssey. We had seen many Vineshs - stretchered off weeping in pain and grief from Rio 2016, the ACL shredded in her left knee. Distraught after being pinned in the Tokyo 2021 quarter-final. The after-effects of a 2017 concussion and Covid leaving her way off her physical best, without a physio, struggling to handle the weight cut, beaten in body, heart and mind, contemplating quitting the sport.
In Paris, we saw a different Vinesh. She was not like the woman we had seen over the last 18 months or through a long career. When she stepped in to fight, you could see she had given up much in order to regain her place at the Games. She had stripped her weight category down from 53 to 50kg and stayed true to the brutal regimen required to stay competitive. Eating in morsels even while training and fighting, careful even about the amount of water she drank.
On Tuesday, Vinesh appeared a wraith-like version of a younger self, a bob replacing her braids. When she first appeared on TV, there was something almost luminescent about her, walking calmly in small steps up to the ring as her opponents bounded, strutted, trotted.
A central figure in the wrestlers' protests against the alleged venality and violence of federation boss Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Vinesh the athlete transported herself from the ring out into public life over the last year. During the many nights and days spent on the pavements of Delhi in the heat and cold, Vinesh has found herself growing, strengthening. With every abuse she faced, every tear she shed or act of brutality she felt from the establishment and their police, she shed fear, restraint, deference and doubt. When they went low, she went high.
On the day of her selection trials for Olympic and Asian slots, Vinesh spoke to the researchers from the Sports and Rights Alliance, (SRA) an athlete's rights organisation, about the protests. Her words in the SRA's recently-released report on "Sexual Abuse in the Indian wrestling federation" are plain, lucid, searing: "Indian society normalises abuse and harassment. They will only take it seriously when the assault is gruesome. But it is like how we fight a wrestling bout. Whether we lost by one point or by ten, we lose. Whether the assault is big or small, it is an assault. An act against our will."
Vinesh's husband Somveer Rathi described her to Al Jazeera: "She is ziddi (stubborn) and doesn't get scared. Once she decides something... she does it...giving up doesn't cross her mind."
Through the first half of 2023, the protests occupied her time and her attention. Through the second half, she was recovering from surgery on the same troublesome ACL. But Vinesh wanted to be in Paris and, in the narrowest window of time available to her, found her way through.
In her first bout, Vinesh was up against a Japanese legend Yui Susaki who the commentators said was already, "setting her goals for Brisbane 2032". Vinesh was to pull off the biggest upset in Paris yet, her performance across three bouts today born of high-quality skill and tactical nous. Of defence and attack, timing and speed, quickness of mind and stoutness of heart. Her defensive masterclass against Susaki surprised everyone who had followed Vinesh's career, her high-speed takedown in the last 12-seconds of the dour bout, stunning the world and shredding the form book.
Wrestling has one of the shortest, sharpest programmes at an Olympics, started and finished inside 36 hours. Wrestlers fight their first two bouts within 90 minutes, take a break for the third bout and if they make it through the rounds, have a night's sleep before starting again the next day.
Every second Vinesh stayed on the mat in Paris on her feet, game face in place, unyielding, unflinching, was a demonstration of defiance. Her body in motion, in victory was an 'eat my dust' message to the man who had called her a khota sikka (counterfeit coin) after Tokyo and to those who continue to suspect and blame victims in defence of perpetrators.
When the buzzer signalled Vinesh's semifinal win and entry into the 50kg Olympic final, her Hungarian coach Voller Akos began to cry. Wrung out at the end of her wrestling day having battled past so much more than tears, Vinesh walked out of the hall with Akos and she was smiling. It was a smile of conviction. You don't pick a fight with a ziddi woman.
In all these years, we believed and maybe she did too, that an Olympic medal would validate her talent and her career. Her Olympic medal will indeed be beautiful, loud, proud, resonant. But Vinesh's sphere of influence is now beyond this athletic ring. Nobody on India's Olympic contingent, this one or those yesterday, medal or not, can say this of themselves.
Today, Vinesh Phogat is India's biggest, bravest, boldest Olympian. We are lucky to have her.