UPDATE (Aug. 19, 2024, 9:21 a.m. ET): The Court of Arbitration for Sport has now published its decision explaining the denial of Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s application for a shared silver medal after she did not make the required weight ahead of the finals. The arbitrator’s decision cited the strict weight rules for Olympic competition.
Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s legal bid for an Olympic silver medal has been rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The star athlete, known for her activism against sexual harassment, was set to compete for a gold medal last week, but she was disqualified after she weighed in at just over the required 50-kilogram limit ahead of that match.
The court’s media release announcing the dismissal of Phogat’s application didn’t explain its reasoning, saying that the decision would be forthcoming on the Switzerland-based tribunal’s website.
But the outcome is unsurprising because, as I previously noted, the wrestling rules state that if an athlete doesn’t attend or fails a weigh-in, then they’re eliminated from the competition “and ranked last, without rank.” Nonetheless, Phogat applied to the tribunal for a (shared) silver medal.
There are separate weigh-ins for each day of competition, so Phogat had made the weight cut-off in her previous matches leading up to the finals. She reportedly only missed the weight last Wednesday by 100 grams — about a fifth of a pound. She had been set to go for gold against U.S. wrestler Sarah Hildebrandt, who won the final match over Cuba’s Yusneylis Guzman Lopez, whom Phogat beat in the semifinal the day before and who took Phogat’s place against Hildebrandt. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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