Vinesh Phogat wants wrestlers from Balali to achieve greater heights

Vinesh Phogat returned to her hometown of Balali on Saturday night, receiving a hero's welcome despite a heartbreaking disqualification at the recent Paris Olympics.

The outpouring of love and support from her community moved Vinesh, who expressed her determination to use her experience and platform to nurture the next generation of wrestling talent in her village Balali, Haryana.

Addressing a gathering of supporters and media, Vinesh pledged to train and mentor young women from Balali, hoping to see them surpass her achievements on the mat.

“Whatever I have learned in wrest­ling, I don’t know if that is god-gif­ted or my hard work but whatever I have I would like to share with my sis­ters from this vil­lage and I wish they achieve greater heights than me," Vinesh was quoted as saying by PTI.

On her way back home from Delhi, Vinesh was feli­cit­ated by her sup­port­ers and ‘khap’ pan­chay­ats in sev­eral vil­lages, with the 135km-long jour­ney tak­ing her almost 13 hours and Vinesh reached her hometown post-midnight.

Vinesh is a two-time CWG gold medal­list, and Asian Games cham­pion and has won eight Asian Cham­pi­on­ships medals. Before arriv­ing in Balali, Vinesh had said that her fight against the Wrest­ling Fed­er­a­tion of India (WFI) would con­tinue. Vinesh is one of the prominent faces wrestler's protest against former WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

“I want to thank all the people who sup­por­ted us in our struggle. Life itself is a struggle. Our fight has not ended and it will con­tinue,” said Vinesh.

While talking about her disqualification from the Paris Olympics 2024 and the CAS verdict, Vinesh said, “This Olympic medal is a deep wound. I don’t know how much time it would take to heal. I don’t know if I would pur­sue wrest­ling or not but the kind of cour­age I got today, I want to use that in the right dir­ec­tion.”