Tokyo 2020: Who is Vinesh Phogat's coach Woller Akos?
Phogat will be participating in her second successive Olympics in Tokyo
Vinesh Phogat will be looking to better her record in the Olympics when she takes the mat in Tokyo 2020, which is set to get underway on July 23, 2021. This time she will be competing in the 53kg weight category rather than in the 48kg.
At Rio 2016, she finished 10th after losing to Sun Yanan of China. This time around, under coach Woller Akos, a former Hungarian wrestler, Vinesh will want to set the record straight. In fact, in Brazil, she had to leave on a stretcher after a knee injury, with tears in her eyes. But this time, she is the top seed in the 53kg weight category ahead of local favourite Mayu Mukaida of Japan.
She ensured her qualification for the Olympics back in 2019 when she finished with a bronze at the World Championships in Nur Sultan.
The wrestling events will start on August 3 and will end on August 7 at the Makuhari Messe in hall A in Tokyo. But ahead of that let us meet and know more about Phogat's coach, namely Woller Akos.
Who is Vinesh Phogat's coach Woller Akos?
Vinesh has been training under Hungarian coach Woller Akos since 2018. She went to a training camp in Hungary where she worked him and ironed out the minor glitches in her game. Since she fights in the lower weight categories, she is subject to fast attacks which troubled her before.
But after training under Akos, she made a few tweaks in her technique and went on to win gold in the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid. Her rich vein of form continued at the Asian Games where she won gold despite Akos not being beside her. However, the coach was closely following her bouts and kept sending her instructions via WhatsApp. Against Yuki Irie, she was absolutely brilliant by blocking her right side which nullified the Japanese wrestler.
Akos had formerly guided his own wife to a World Championship gold medal in 2011 and the first thing he worked on Phogat was on her mentality.
"If the newspapers said she was doing badly, she would take it to heart. 'I'm doing this wrong, I could improve this. This can be better,'" Akos told ESPN.
After instilling a champion mentality in her he focused on structuring a training routine that would bring the best out of her. Every minute detail would be taken care of emulating competition scenarios would form an integral part of the training.
"Everything has to be explosive because that is the sort of power we need in the competition," Vinesh stated.
Before the World Championship in 2019, she was told by her coach not to drop her concentration level for the entire six minutes as her focus kept fluctuating. She stuck by the sermon and reaped regards by bagging a bronze medal and an Olympic berth.
In the final lap of her preparations, she had trained with sparring partners from Ukraine and Hungary that included Iryna Husyak (European champion), Sofiia Bodnar (Cadet European champion and Ukrainian national team member), Mercédesz Dénes ( Cadet European champion, junior world silver medalist, U23 European medalist).
In 2021, she has been in a scorching form where she won a gold in Ukrainian Wrestlers and Coaches Memorial tournament, Matteo Pellicone Ranking Series event, and the Poland Open. Given her current streak, Phogat will be one of the leading contenders for a podium spot at the Olympics.