Sarah Hildebrandt Navigates Chaotic Aftermath of Opponent’s DQ to Win Wrestling Gold

Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat was declared ineligible and knocked off the podium after failing to make weight by a few ounces, a stunning result with sizable implications.

In the gold-medal match, Hildebrandt was set to face India's Phogat, who failed to make the weight to compete. / Sarah Phipps/USA TODAY Sports

PARIS — The weigh-in for the gold-medal match was at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. Sarah Hildebrandt made the 50 kilogram weight for her freestyle wrestling bout with no concerns. Her opponent, Vinesh Phogat, was absent.

That was strange.

It would quickly get more strange.

Phogat, from India, failed to make the weight to compete—reportedly by about 100 grams, or one-fifth of a pound. She was disqualified and placed last in the entire competition, knocking her off the podium, a stunning result with socio-political implications in her home country. 

The DQ might be unprecedented for a gold-medal match in Olympic wrestling history. Wrestling veterans could not recall a previous instance.

At first it was believed that the gold-medal match would be forfeited to Hildebrandt, which prompted a celebration in her camp. Then news came down that the woman Phogat defeated in the semifinals, Yusneylys Guzmán of Cuba, would be elevated to the gold-medal match. Hildebrandt went from preparing for one opponent to thinking the event was over to preparing for another one in about an hour.

“I was preparing for chaos,” said Hildebrandt. “And that was not on my bingo card of chaos.”

The chaos cleared in time for Hildebrandt to win gold, 3-0, in a fairly pedestrian match against an opponent she’d already beaten 10-0 earlier in her career. As great a moment as it was for USA Wrestling to collect women’s gold medals on consecutive nights, with Hildebrandt following undefeated phenom Amit Elor, the wrestler on everyone’s mind was absent.

A sad, desperate melodrama had played out overnight and into Wednesday morning. Vinesh, attempting to win the first women's wrestling gold medal in Indian history, reportedly came out of a triumphant, three-win effort Tuesday only to find out that she was 2.7 kilograms overweight—about six pounds—which was more than expected and a major problem.

India wrestling staffers put Vinesh through a sleepless night that included exercise, time in the sauna and withholding food and water. Still overweight, they resorted to cutting Vinesh’s hair. It was all for naught. Her Olympics was over.

In a statement on X, India Olympic Association’s chief medical officer, Dr. Dinshaw Pardiwala, said Vinesh was given “limited water and high-energy foods” after making a successful weigh-in on Tuesday, the first day of the competition. Pardiwala said Vinesh’s nutritionist estimated a gain of about 1.5 kilograms from the intake after the weigh-in, adding that there sometimes is a “rebound weight gain” following competition.

After taking in “small amounts of water” to get through the three-match day Tuesday, Vinesh was indeed overweight. The usual weight-cutting procedures weren’t effective, so “all possible drastic measures” were employed, according to Pardiwala. Nothing worked.

Even if Vinesh made the weight, she might have been in no shape physically or mentally to effectively battle Hildebrandt for a gold. But she would have been assured a silver medal, instead of DQ’d and ranked last.

While those are the rules, they didn’t sit well with everyone in the wrestling community. Retired U.S. Olympian Jordan Burroughs said on X that Vinesh should be awarded the silver medal as part of a list of changes he would like to see made in the United World Wrestling rules.

The reaction in India was oversized anguish. Prime minister Narendra Modi even weighed in on social media with his support: “Visneh, you are a champion among champions! You are India's pride and an inspiration for each and every Indian. Today’s setback hurts. I wish words could express the sense of despair that I am experiencing.”

That was a bit of a turn for Modi, whose government cracked down on a protest Vinesh took part in last year. She was one of three athletes who engaged in the dramatic public stand over allegations that India’s wrestling chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, sexually harassed at least seven young women, one of whom was a minor, over the course of a decade, starting in 2012. Their protest camp in New Delhi had been dismantled and the wrestlers were taken off to detention. After being released, they went to the Ganges River and threatened to throw their wrestling medals into the water.  (Singh said he was innocent. “If a single allegation against me is proven, I will hang myself,” he said last year, according to the New York Times.)

Modi’s political rivals seized on the stunning DQ of Vinesh to attack the government, with arguments erupting in parliament over who is responsible and what could be done, according to New Delhi TV. Because everything can be wielded as a political cudgel if need be.

Cutting weight is a grimly necessary part of wrestling. Virtually all wrestlers do it, building it into their lifestyle. Hildebrandt said after winning her gold that she had to cut some weight Wednesday morning—“just get a little sweat in”—and does so routinely.

She articulated some sympathy for Vinesh. Some.

“As a big weight cutter myself, I feel for her,” Hildebrandt said. “She had an amazing day [Tuesday], did some insane feats, and I don’t think she saw that happening, ending her Olympics like that.

“It sucks, but at the end of the day it’s definitely part of the job. We’ve all got to get it done. It was something I’ve spent a lot of time on, and it paid off.”

Weight limits exist for a reason, to level playing fields between competitors. “Pound-for-pound” competition is the standard in boxing, wrestling and other combat sports. Everyone knows what the weight limits are, and what penalties come with missing them. It’s a baseline measure of fairness.

But the nasty business of what it sometimes takes to make weight is the unspoken part of those sports. It can be hazardous for the athlete’s health and can lead to eating disorders.

At the Olympic level, the number of weight classes are reduced from 10 in United World Wrestling events to six, which compounds the problem. It leads to a lot of weight juggling by a lot of competitors—Hildebrandt among them. She’d previously competed at 55 kg.

“The weight cut has taken a lot of discipline and execution,” she said. “I actually started the weight cut for this Games back at the end of 2022 … I had the smoothest cut of my life for Paris 2024 and it paid off, all the sacrifices and planning ahead.”

To appreciate the dismay in India, you have to understand the nation’s Olympic history. It’s remarkably sparse for a nation of 1.4 billion people, second-most populous on the planet after China.

India has won a total of 38 Olympic medals, or roughly five days’ work in an average Summer Games for the United States. Ten of those are gold, and eight of the 10 were won in men’s field hockey, and that run of dominance ceased in 1980. Since then India’s two golds have come in shooting (2008) and javelin (2021). 

India’s women’s sports have been well behind the international curve. That’s started to change with four female medalists in the last two Olympics, but there still is a long way to go.

Exactly zero Indian women have ever won an Olympic gold medal. Exactly zero Indian women wrestlers have even reached a gold-medal match, topping out with a bronze in 2016. And exactly zero Indian men or women have won a gold medal so far in Paris.

Which is why the DQ of Vinesh was such a gut punch. Not that she was guaranteed a victory, but she at least had a chance to become an Indian pioneer on multiple levels.

She was denied the opportunity by one-fifth of a pound.