Vinesh Phogat: Age, Husband, Son, Height and Net Worth

Who Is Vinesh Phogat? The Short Answer:

Vinesh Phogat grew up in the same village akhada that produced Geeta and Babita Phogat, and for a long stretch she was the best wrestler that famous family had. She won Commonwealth Games gold three times in a row, took Asian Games gold in Jakarta in 2018 and picked up two World Championship bronze medals.

Most people outside wrestling learned her name in August 2024. In one afternoon in Paris she beat the reigning Olympic champion, who had never lost an international bout, and then two more opponents to reach the 50 kg final. The next morning the scale read 100 grams over the limit, and she was out. Within two months she had won an election instead.

That swing from heartbreak to the Assembly, followed by motherhood and a return to the sport, is why so many people still search for her. This page covers all of it: her age, height, family, husband and son, every big result, her money, her stars and the stories behind the headlines.

Vinesh Phogat Bio at a Glance:

If you only have a minute, this table answers the questions people ask most.

Full name	Vinesh Phogat
What does she do?	Freestyle wrestler and Congress MLA from Julana
When was she born?	Thursday, 25 August 1994
How old is she?	32 years
Where was she born?	Balali village, Charkhi Dadri district, Haryana
Who are her parents?	Rajpal Phogat and Premlata Phogat
Who trained her?	Her uncle, Dronacharya awardee Mahavir Singh Phogat
Who is she married to?	Wrestler Somvir Rathee, since December 2018
Does she have children?	Yes, a son born in July 2025
Which sport and style?	Women’s freestyle wrestling
Olympic Games played	Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024
Which party is she with?	Indian National Congress, joined in September 2024
Religion	Hindu
Nationality	Indian

How Old Is Vinesh Phogat? Her Age and Birthday:

She was born on 25 August 1994, a Thursday, in Balali. That makes her 32 right now. The counter below works it out from her birth date every time the page opens, so it never goes stale.

A small detail most people miss: the name on her school papers was not always Vinesh. She has told the story of how a relative went to fix a wrong date of birth in her school records and changed her name at the same time. She has no idea where he picked it from, but it stuck.

Height, Weight and Physical Stats:

In wrestling the scale matters far more than the tape, and her body numbers have been tied to her career more tightly than almost any other Indian athlete’s. Here is how she measures up.

How tall is she?	159 cm, roughly five foot two and a half
Where did she wrestle on her return?	53 kg at the Asian Games trials, after entering at 57 kg
Her lightest Olympic class	48 kg, at Rio 2016
Hair colour	Black, worn short since the Paris Games
Eye colour	Dark brown

Her weight story is the real one. Over her career she has moved across five weight classes, often shifting because of injuries or because another Indian already held the quota in her category.

Weight classes in kilograms. Orange marks the class of her two biggest days.

After her semi-final win in Paris she was reported to be around 2.7 kg over 50 kg, and she spent the whole night cutting, without sleep or much water. The fact that she nearly made it tells you how hard that night was.

Where She Comes From: Balali, Her Parents and the Akhada:

Balali is a village in Charkhi Dadri district, and in the 1990s it was not a place where girls wrestled. Her uncle Mahavir Singh Phogat decided his daughters and nieces would, and the village pushed back hard. Her father Rajpal, who drove a bus for a living, was the brother who stood with him.

Rajpal was killed in a family land dispute when Vinesh was about eight. Not long after, her mother Premlata was diagnosed with cancer. Relatives pushed Premlata to change course, and she refused. She raised the children on her own through her treatment while Mahavir kept them on the mat.

Training under Mahavir was strict to the point of legend. The girls were not allowed long hair, and Vinesh, who badly wanted it as a teenager, only got permission to grow it out in her early twenties.

The Phogat family tree:

The family gets confusing fast, so here is who is who.

Rio 2016 and the Knee That Gave Way:

She went to Rio at 21 as a genuine medal hope in the 48 kg class. In the quarter-final against China’s Sun Yanan her knee buckled, she was carried off on a stretcher, and the diagnosis was a torn ACL. Plenty of careers end there.

She got the Arjuna Award that same year, spent months in rehab, and came back in a heavier class. Two years later she beat Sun Yanan at the Asian Games on the way to gold.

2018, the Year Everything Clicked:

Gold at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Gold at the Jakarta Asian Games, where she beat Japan’s Yuki Irie in the final to become the first Indian woman wrestler ever to win Asiad gold. Silver at the Asian Championships for good measure.

That run earned her a nomination for Laureus World Comeback of the Year in 2019. She was the first Indian athlete ever nominated for a Laureus award, on a shortlist with Tiger Woods, who won it.

In 2019 she moved up to 53 kg and took bronze at the World Championships in Nur-Sultan, which made her the first Indian wrestler to book a place at the Tokyo Olympics. The Khel Ratna, India’s top sporting honour, followed in 2020.

Tokyo 2020 and a Rough Patch:

Tokyo went badly. She was top seed at 53 kg and lost her quarter-final to Belarus’s Vanesa Kaladzinskaya. Soon after, the federation suspended her for indiscipline, saying she had refused to train with the Indian team and skipped the official kit. She apologised and was cleared to compete again.

She answered on the mat. In 2022 she won her third straight Commonwealth gold in Birmingham and a second World bronze in Belgrade, the first Indian woman to win two World Championship medals in wrestling.

The 2023 Protest That Changed Her Life:

In January 2023, Vinesh, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia sat on the pavement at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and accused the then federation chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, of sexually harassing women wrestlers. He denied it. The protest ran for months, and in May 2023 the wrestlers were dragged away and detained by police while trying to march towards the new Parliament building.

A Delhi court later framed charges against him. When his close associate Sanjay Singh won the federation election in December 2023, she left her Khel Ratna and Arjuna Award on the pavement near the Prime Minister’s Office in protest. A knee injury in August 2023 then needed surgery and kept her out of that year’s Asian Games.

Paris 2024: The 36 Hours Everyone Remembers:

She came back from surgery, could not get the 53 kg spot that Antim Panghal had already secured, and dropped to 50 kg to qualify. Then came this.

The Susaki win was the shock of the tournament. She trailed for almost the whole bout, then turned it in the final seconds. Nobody had seen the Japanese wrestler beaten by a foreigner before.

Under the rules, the final needs a second weigh-in. Despite cutting hair, sweating through the night and having blood drawn, she could not get the last 100 grams off. Guzman Lopez took her place in the final against Sarah Hildebrandt of the USA. A day later she posted her goodbye to the sport in Hindi. The line people quoted most, translated, was:

She appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a shared silver. The appeal was dismissed. Back home, crowds waited fourteen hours to welcome her into Balali, and Haryana’s government offered her the same rewards it gives an Olympic silver medallist.

Into Politics: How She Won Julana:

On 6 September 2024 she resigned from her job with Indian Railways and joined the Congress alongside Bajrang Punia. The party fielded her from Julana in Jind district, her husband’s home area.

The count on 8 October was tense. The lead swung both ways in the early rounds before she pulled clear, and the final numbers looked like this:

Her margin was 6,015 votes, and it gave the Congress its first Julana win since 2005. The field even included another wrestler, Kavita Dalal, a former WWE star who stood for the Aam Aadmi Party. Haryana later approved a Rs 4 crore cash award and a plot for her under its Olympic policy, and she has said she wants to use the money to build a sports academy for young athletes.

Husband Somvir Rathee and Their Love Story:

Somvir Rathee is a wrestler too, a two-time national champion from Jind district. The two met in 2011 when both worked for Indian Railways, stayed friends for years and quietly started dating.

The proposal is the part people love. When she flew home from Jakarta with her Asian Games gold in August 2018, he was waiting at Delhi airport with a ring. They exchanged rings right outside the arrivals gate, on her 24th birthday, and she later admitted he had only told her the plan on the flight.

They married on 13 December 2018 in Balali in a simple ceremony. Instead of the usual seven pheras they took eight. The extra round was a pledge to save, educate and train daughters, a nod to everything her family had fought for.

Somvir has stayed in her corner ever since, all the way to the trials hall in Delhi on her comeback. He has described her as ziddi, which means stubborn, and as someone who does not get scared.

Motherhood and the Son Who Joined Her Team:

The couple shared the news of her pregnancy on Instagram in March 2025. She gave birth to a baby boy at a hospital in Delhi on 1 July 2025, and her brother Harvinder confirmed mother and child were both doing well. The family has not made the boy’s name public, and this page leaves it at that.

When she announced her return to wrestling, she called him her little cheerleader for the road to Los Angeles.

The Comeback: Chasing LA 2028:

She reversed her retirement in December 2025, writing that she was heading back towards LA 2028 with a heart that was unafraid and “a spirit that refuses to bow”. If she makes it, she will be the first Indian woman wrestler at four Olympic Games.

Getting back onto the mat turned out to be its own fight. The federation’s eligibility rules only counted medallists from events she had missed while pregnant, so she was kept out of selection. She went to court. In May 2026 the Delhi High Court ruled that motherhood could not be a reason to shut a woman athlete out, and the Supreme Court let her take part in the Asian Games trials.

In her first competitive bouts since Paris, wrestling at 53 kg, she beat Jyoti 7 to 1 and then came back from 0 to 5 down to edge Nishu 7 to 6. Asian Championships silver medallist Meenakshi Goyat stopped her 6 to 4 in the semi-final. The eligibility question has kept coming back with each new selection cycle, so expect more of her story to play out in courtrooms as well as on the mat.

Medals and Records:

Here is her major medal haul at the top multi-sport and world events.

Counts cover the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games and World Championships only. Her Asian Championships medals are listed in the table.

And here is the same record event by event, with the years and weight classes.

Which event?	What did she win there?
Olympic Games	Three trips; reached the 2024 final, no medal after the weigh-in ruling
World Championships	Bronze in 2019 and 2022, both at 53 kg
Asian Games	Gold in 2018 at 50 kg, bronze in 2014 at 48 kg
Commonwealth Games	Gold in 2014, 2018 and 2022, three Games running
Asian Championships	Gold in 2021, plus several silvers and bronzes

The firsts that belong to her:

First Indian woman to reach an Olympic wrestling final. First Indian woman wrestler to win Asian Games gold. First Indian woman wrestler at three Olympics. First Indian athlete nominated for a Laureus award. She is also the only Indian woman wrestler with gold at both the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games.

A career timeline:

Awards and Honours:

The national awards came early, and the way she handed two of them back is part of her story too.

Which honour?	When and what happened
Arjuna Award	2016; left near the PMO in protest in 2023
Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna	2020; also returned in 2023
Laureus World Comeback of the Year	Nominated for 2019, the first Indian ever
BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year	Nominated in 2022

Vinesh Phogat Net Worth and Income:

Her net worth sits at around Rs 7 to 8 crore. Unlike most athletes, she has had to put her assets on record under oath, so this figure starts from her own sworn declaration rather than guesswork.

The affidavit also showed an income of a little under Rs 14 lakh in the 2023 to 24 tax year, when she was still a Railways officer. That number tells you how modestly paid even a world-class Indian wrestler was before Paris made her a household name.

Since then her income has come from four places: her salary and allowances as an MLA, brand endorsements, the Haryana award and whatever she earns back on the mat. You will see much bigger numbers floating around, including claims of Rs 36 crore, but none of them square with what she has declared under oath. Her husband also publicly denied claims that she had been handed Rs 16 crore in prizes after Paris.

Vinesh Phogat Zodiac Sign and Astrology Chart:

Born on 25 August, she falls just inside Virgo on the Western zodiac. Her exact birth time has never been made public, so her rising sign cannot be worked out, but her date alone gives a fair bit.

Astrology fans like to point out that a Virgo who lost an Olympic final by 100 grams is almost too neat. Wrestlers would say that is just weight-cutting, and the margins in her sport are always that brutal.

Religion, Roots and Education:

She follows Hinduism and comes from a wrestling family in rural Haryana. Her schooling ran alongside daily training in the family akhada, and wrestling paid for her future long before any degree did. Her career off the mat began with a job at Indian Railways, which she held until she resigned to enter politics.

Myths People Still Believe About Her:

A few stories about her refuse to die. Here is what is actually true.

Where to Follow Her on Social Media:

She posts herself on both of these, and these are the handles to trust. Plenty of fan pages use similar names.

Platform	Her handle
Instagram	@vineshphogat
X (Twitter)	@Phogat_Vinesh

Little Things You Might Not Know:

1. Her father used to tell her he dreamed of seeing her fly in a plane. She wrote about it in the long letter she posted after Paris.
2. As a schoolgirl she was known for fighting back against boys who bothered her, and her father was proud of it rather than angry.
3. She won her first Commonwealth Games gold in Glasgow in 2014, when she was still only 19.
4. At least one bookmaker had her as an 80 to 1 shot for gold before the Paris tournament began.
5. Her Laureus nomination came on the same shortlist as Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn.
6. She worked for Indian Railways, as did her husband, and that is where they met.
7. The eighth phera at her wedding was dedicated to girls’ right to study and play sport.
8. In the Julana election she beat both a former Army officer and a former WWE wrestler.
9. Bajrang Punia, her protest partner and party colleague, is family too. He is married to her cousin Sangeeta.
10. Offered a choice of state rewards after Paris, she took the cash award and passed on a government job.

Final Take:

Strip away the noise and Vinesh Phogat is simply one of the best wrestlers India has produced, with a career that has had more twists than most novels. The ACL in Rio, the gold rush of 2018, the protest on a Delhi pavement and 100 grams in Paris would each be the defining chapter for most athletes. For her they are just stops along the way. Whether or not she reaches Los Angeles, the girl from Balali who was told girls should not wrestle has already changed what that village, and much of India, thinks a daughter can do.