India's first Olympic medallist from Rio, Sakshi Malik, as voluble as she is gutsy, said her bronze medal belonged as much to her as her friend and fellow wrestler Vinesh Phogat, whose Olympic campaign came to an end due to a knee injury sustained during her quarter-final bout.
Sakshi, who was unheralded in the run up to Rio in comparison with the Phogat sisters, said that Vinesh had been considered the medal favourite among the women's wrestling contingent.
"This medal is for her, for everyone who has supported me, my sparring partners, my coaches. She is my friend and my training partner, I have enjoyed practicing with her, she has very good technique and speed," Sakshi told ESPN.
"Vinesh and I have been together as cadets and juniors, we joke and fight during any competition: one will say I'm going to win a medal this time, the other will say no, no I am. Today when we left our rooms we said, kuch bhi jo jaaye (whatever happens), at least there's one medal here. I had a lot of hope in Vinesh, her medal was almost like a certainty for us all."
Vinesh's injury, a tear of her knee ligament against Chinese wrestler Sun Yanan, Sakshi said, had affected her spirits. "I thought why has this happened, if Vinesh is not going to get a medal, then what's left." The gloom lifted once she told herself, "that is now up to me. I have to do something, and set my mind to it. To get the first medal for India"
"At no stage, did I ever think I wouldn't be able to make it. On all my four bouts in the competition, I've been trailing, I covered it up in the second half. This is how it has been. I never accepted defeat in the entire competition." Sakshi Malik
Sakshi was not worried about trailing 0-5 in repechage bout for her bronze as she had been through three previous bouts trailing and used the second half of her bout to fight her way back into contention.
"At no stage, did I ever think I wouldn't be able to make it. On all my four bouts in the competition, I've been trailing, I covered it up in the second half. This is how it has been. I never accepted defeat in the entire competition. When I was 5-0 down, I thought there are three minutes left, things can change so I fought to the end and gave my 100 percent and that's how I've got my medal."
Speaking about her bout, Sakshi said, "She (Tynybekova) was tiring, because she had given it everything in her first three bouts and I had not. I was also tired because it was my fifth bout of the day but I had three minutes to give my best. I knew I had covered up a deficit I think with 9 seconds left, so had the confidence that medal hai tere paas (the medal is yours).
She now joins a unique club of Indian individual medallists from its most successful individual sport: wrestling, which began with Kashaba Jadhav's 1952 medal and culminated with medals to Sushil Kumar (Beijing and London) and Yogeshwar Dutt (London.)
"I can't imagine belonging to this group, I can't believe it. It will take a while. For me to even talk about them (in the same breath)... I've seen them training, they (Sushil & Yogeshwar) have done do much for us wrestlers, winning medals in the Olympics, opening the route for us. Now that's I've won a medal and for my name to be taken with them, it is a matter of great pride for me."
She dreams now of a medal of a different colour in country that has always fascinated her. "One of my big dreams is to go to Japan. I've competed in many countries but not in Japan. From the time I began, I hear people saying the Japanese girls are very good wrestlers, their training is great, their facilities are great, and now that the next Olympics is in Tokyo, and I would like to work hard to get there and change the colour of that medal."