Sarah Ann Hildebrandt, the wrestler from America grabbed the golden prize in 50kg class during Olympics held at Paris after Vinesh Phogat the Indian wrestler was disqualified for being one hundred grams above her weight limit.
For a while and despite being prepared for final match, Hildebrandt encountered an unforeseen event when she found out that it was no longer Phogat but Yusneylis Guzman Lopez of Cuba whom set up against and won to become a champion.
Phogat who is 29 years old had already been eliminated after failing to meet her weigh-in requirements therefore, she had been replaced by Lopez with who she had earlier defeated in semi-final. Hildebrandt aged 30 who previously won bronze medal in Tokyo Olympic Games explained about how confused she was during weigh-in thinking that forfeiting match.
“I thought we were going to be chaos personified but then I looked at my bingo card of chaos and saw nothing like this” Sarah said to Parami News.
Hildebrandt believed that Phogat had missed the weigh-ins on purpose because of too much pressure since her name was not called up.
“(Vinesh) wasn’t at weigh-ins, so I was in my head like, ‘Oh my gosh, this might be a possibility.’ Then we get the news that she didn’t make weight, so we were under the impression that it was a forfeit. So there was a lot of celebrating,” she remembered.
However, this celebration proved to be ahead of time as she later realized.
“It felt very strange. Like ‘Oh my god I just won olympics’. And then an hour later they were like ‘You did not win any olympics’. I’m like ‘Okay this is really weird.’ So there’s gotta be a reset. I took a nap woke up its kind of like a fever dream.” She noted.
Before competing at the Olympics in the 50kg category, Phogat had made extreme efforts to lose weight such as staying hungry, not drinking any fluids and sweating overnight. These measures were fruitless since she found herself one hundred grams above the required weight and dehydrated leading to IV fluids being given at a village clinic inside Games Village.
