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Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) has rejected Vinesh Phogat's silver medal appeal a day after pushing the date for her petition's verdict for the third time. The star Indian wrestler will not win a medal as a result of this. She reached the final of the 50-kg women's wrestling event at the Paris Olympics 2024, but she was disqualified for weighing 100 grams more than the allowed limit. CAS pushed its verdict earlier as well and said it would declare its decision on August 13, 2024. However, later they said the decision would be announced on August 16. Shockingly, the decision came only a day after pushing it forward.
Why was Vinesh Phogat's appeal rejected?
It was being expected from the beginning that Vinesh Phogat might not get the medal despite her appeal to CAS as the history itself suggests CAS has stuck with the rules whenever there has been such an incident. However, everyone was still hopeful and wishing that the Court of Arbitration for Sports would say their decision in the favour of the Indian wrestler.
According to the rules, Wrestlers must meet weight requirements on two separate occasions, the morning of the final round and befor that also on the morning of the preliminary round. On Tuesday morning, Vinesh effectively made weight, coming in inside the permitted 50kg cutoff. Nonetheless, subsequent to recharging her energy following three extraordinary matches, her weight probably expanded over the course of the day. She needed to lose approximately 2 kilograms overnight in order to meet the weight requirement once more. however sadly, she actually surpassed the cutoff limit by a mere 100 grams at Wednesday toward the beginning of the weigh-in.
If an athlete fails to make the weight, they will be disqualified from the competition under Article 11 of the United World Wrestling's rule book. It states, "If an athlete does not attend or fail the weigh-in (the 1st or the 2nd weigh-in), he will be eliminated of the competition and ranked last, without rank."
President of United World Wrestling, the international organization of wrestling, Nenad Lalovich was also clear while addressing this matter during a conversation with Sports Tak and said "nothing can be done now and rules are rules, they should be respected". This showed how rigid UWW was with its rules.
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