Vinesh Phogat’s Comeback: Aiming for Glory at LA 2028 Olympics

New Delhi:

Wrestler Vinesh Phogat has made a retirement U-turn and has now set her sights on the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. She released a statement on X, confirming the development and also revealed that her son will be her biggest motivation as she aims to make a comeback at the Games to win a medal for her country. For the unversed, Vinesh had announced her retirement in August 2024 after being disqualified from the final at the Paris Olympics for being 100 grams overweight in her category of 50 kg.

“People kept asking if Paris was the end. For a long time, I didn’t have the answer. I needed to step away from the mat, from the pressure, from the expectations, even from my own ambitions. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to breathe. I took time to understand the weight of my journey the highs, the heartbreaks, the sacrifices, the versions of me the world never saw. And somewhere in that reflection, I found the truth, I still love this sport.

“I still want to compete. In that silence, I found something I’d forgotten ‘the fire never left’. It was only buried under exhaustion and noise. The discipline, the routine, the fight… it’s in my system. No matter how far I walked away, a part of me stayed on the mat. So here I am, stepping back toward LA28 with a heart that’s unafraid and a spirit that refuses to bow. And this time, I’m not walking alone my son is joining my team, my biggest motivation, my little cheerleader on this road to the LA Olympics,” Vinesh wrote on X.

What had happened at the Paris Olympics after she was disqualified?

Vinesh Phogat had appealed against her disqualification from the Olympic final in the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) and demanded that she be awarded a joint-silver medal. An ad-hoc division of the CAS had also been set up in Paris. However, her appeal was rejected in the end after the matter was delayed multiple times post the Olympics.

Vinesh had retired as a three-time Olympian and with gold medals in both Asian and Commonwealth Games. However, she is set to return yet again with an aim to win her first-ever Olympic medal in her career.

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