Indian contingent's medical officer explains drastic measures to reduce Vinesh Phogat's weight

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Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala, Chief Medical Officer of the Indian Contingent speaks on Vinesh Phogat's disqualification. He says, "...Her post-participation weight at the end of the semi-finals in the evening was found to be 2.7 kg more than the allowed weight. The team and the coach started off their usual process, which is of course limitation of water, no food. And you started with the whole process of sweating it out. Typically, you require some amount of time for that. But unfortunately, we didn't have too much time. We had just 12 hours...'

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Transcript

00:00Now, this process of weight cut involves a calculated restriction of food and water and

00:08we also involve a lot of excessive sweating which is done with exercise, with sauna, with

00:14steam and thereby we achieve that weight cut prior to the morning weigh-in.

00:21Now this weight cut causes weakness and causes some amount of energy depletion and this is

00:27really counterproductive to participation and hence for participation we do need to

00:34then restore energy with some amounts of water and some amounts of energy foods.

00:39So you can see this is a fine balance.

00:42If you can reduce your weight, you are going to be fighting with less stronger opponents

00:46so most wrestlers prefer that but at the same time you have to have a strategy which you

00:51are going to be able to get back your energy with enough water restoration and food.

01:00Now this is typically calculated by the team with that wrestler.

01:05So Vinesh's nutritionist and team had calculated this to be about 1.5 kgs and this is a team

01:11that has been working with her since many many years and she is extremely comfortable

01:16with that team and this has actually worked with her in the past.

01:20So she took in that 1.5 kgs which is necessary for her to be able to fight those three bouts.

01:26And I think it's important to remember that usually once you have this weight loss, it's

01:30by dehydration.

01:31So as soon as you take water, there is going to be a rebound increase in your weight and

01:38during the bouts, because she had three really difficult bouts, she did need to have some

01:42amount of water because you do want to rehydrate because otherwise it's going to be medically

01:47a problem to participate.

01:48So you do require some amount of nutrition and some amount of water.

01:53Now her post-participation weight at the end of the semi-finals in the evening was found

01:58to be 2.7 kgs more than the allowed weight.

02:04And the team and the coach started off their usual process which is of course limitation

02:10of water, no food and you started with the whole process of sweating it out.

02:16Typically you require some amount of time for that but unfortunately we didn't have

02:21too much time, we had just 12 hours.

02:23So the whole night, the entire team went ahead with this whole process of trying to reduce

02:29her weight, putting her in a steam and sauna, making her exercise and whatever was medically

02:35possible, we tried our best to try and get that weight down.

02:42And when she couldn't sweat anymore, we even had to go to some drastic measures like cutting

02:47off her hair and they wear a vest, so we shortened that vest, so even a few milligrams if we

02:54can reduce, we tried.

02:56And despite all of this, at about 7.15 to 7.30 is the weigh-in and we wanted to try

03:03the best so we got her weight done right at the end at around 7.29.

03:07It was unfortunately 100 grams over 50 kilograms.

03:12If we maybe had a few hours more, we could have achieved that 100 grams but we just didn't

03:17have that time.

03:19Now once she was disqualified, then the question was as a precautionary measure, we do need

03:26to rehydrate her and the best way to rehydrate an athlete is by giving an intravenous fluid.

03:32So we gave her a few intravenous fluids.

03:34She started eating and drinking, she's passed urine and she's otherwise perfectly normal

03:41physically and medically.

03:44We've got her blood tests done just as a precautionary measure, we always do that, that's a routine

03:49and those blood tests are also okay.

03:51And Vinesh of course has interacted with IOA President Dr. Mrs. P. T. Usha and she's told

04:00that physically and medically I'm okay but of course undoubtedly she's disappointed.

04:06This is her third Olympics, she was really keen to try and do something for the country

04:10but because of this 100 grams has been disqualified.

Indian contingent's medical officer explains drastic measures to reduce Vinesh Phogat's weight

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