Vinesh Phogat suffers shocking defeat at Olympics, puts hopes on repechage

India’s female wrestler and medal contender Vinesh Phogat suffered a shocking defeat in the quarterfinals of the 53 kg women's wrestling event at the Olympics. She was knocked out by Vanesa Kaladzinskaya 3-9 at the Makuhari Messe Hall on Thursday.

Vinesh Phogat looked off-colour during the last-eight clash against the Belarusian wrestler. She seemed out of place and struggled to break Kaladzinskaya’s solid defense.

Vinesh Phogat will now have to wait for the semi-final results between Kaladzinskaya and China’s Pang Qianyu. She will reach the repechage if the Belarus wrestler progresses to the final.

Vinesh Phogat had started her campaign strong, winning her opening bout 7-1 against Sweden’s Sofia Magdalena Mattsson, the 2016 Rio Olympics bronze medalist.

What is repechage?

In wrestling, the repechage comes into effect for the wrestlers who lost in the pre-quarterfinals and last eight. It allows the grapplers a chance to revive themselves and get a shot at the bronze medal. However, the repechage rule only applies if the opponent they lost to reaches the final. The winner then faces the losing semi-finalist for the bronze medal bout.

Anshu Malik’s campaign ends

Meanwhile, Anshu Malik lost to Valeria Koblova of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in the repechage bout of the 57 kg weight category. With this, her campaign at the Tokyo Olympics came to an end.

Anshu lost to Iryna Kurachkina of Belarus in the pre-quarterfinal on Wednesday. When Kurachkina reached the final, it gave the Indian wrestler a shot at the bronze medal via repechage.

But in the repechage, Koblova proved too strong for Anshu Malik as she emerged the 5-1 winner.

The Russian wrestler opened the scoring but Anshu managed to level the score 1-1. However, in the dying 30 seconds, Koblova went full throttle and scored four points to win the bout.