For Mirabai Chanu, winning a medal at the Commonwealth Championship must have felt like getting a primary school certificate after completing a doctorate.
The gold medal she won on Monday — in a lightweight field of the lightest weight category, 48kg — may not rank high in her long list of achievements. Even Mirabai, with the medal hanging around her neck, acknowledged that the Commonwealth Championship wasn’t about the result. As she pressed reset after a punishing Paris Olympics cycle, the weightlifter was focussed on the bigger picture. In that context, the dream team of Mirabai and her coach Vijay Sharma will return from Ahmedabad with more gains than the modest total of 193 kg (84 in snatch and 109 in clean and jerk) suggests.
Mirabai had one legitimate attempt in the snatch section of the competition — managing 84 kg. When she went for 87, the elbow pressed out ever so slightly and it was deemed a ‘no lift’. In clean and jerk, Mirabai’s strength, the Tokyo Olympics silver medallist could not begin her final attempt within the stipulated 30 seconds and so, even though she managed to lift 113 kg, it wasn’t counted in the final score.
This was Mirabai competing with herself, given that her closest rival, Irene Henry of Malaysia, had totalled 32 kg fewer. With a total of 162 kg, Henry had won the silver medal but so far ahead was Mirabai than the rest of the competition that she stepped on the platform only after everyone else had completed all their attempts.
India’s Mirabai Chanu after her unsuccessful third attempt during the clean and jerk stage of the women’s 49kg weightlifting event at the 2024 Summer Olympics, in Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024. (PTI Photo)
Biggest takeaway
Other than a slight discomfort she experienced in her left wrist during one of the attempts, the biggest takeaway for Sharma after Monday’s soft relaunch was that Mirabai is ‘ready’ for the year’s headline event — next month’s World Championship. “That was our goal for this tournament, to get her tournament ready. We are on track to touch 200kg at the World Championship. Whether that leads to a medal or not, we’ll see. But 200 is within our reach,” Sharma said.
At some level, there was relief that her return to the lifting went ‘smoothly’. The Commonwealth Championship was Mirabai’s first international tournament since her Paris Olympics heartbreak exactly a year ago — “my longest break,” Mirabai gushed.
Sharma added since there were no big tournaments immediately after Paris, they wanted to give Mirabai’s battered body a break. “It is important to give rest to the body. For a long period, she was doing high-intensity training for the Olympics so that rest was important,” Sharma says.
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The duo also waited for the revised categories in the new Olympic cycle and when the international federation revealed it, the news wasn’t all that good. The lowest weight category was moved from 49kg to 48kg — only one kilo less on the face of it but for Mirabai, it meant a profound way in the way she prepared for a competition.
“Losing that extra 1kg is a big deal for me,” Mirabai said. “I have to control my diet, watch my weight and also ensure I don’t lose muscles.”
At some level, there’s also ‘fear that with age’ — Mirabai is 31 — ‘if she would be able to reduce on match-day and make weight,’ Sharma added.
So, they took the decision to get Mirabai to compete at the domestic trials for the Commonwealth Championship — there was no doubt she would make the team, but the idea was to simulate match-day situations. There, Mirabai had ‘a bit of a problem reducing’ weight to 48kg, according to Sharma. The dieticians and physios got into the act — the scars of an athlete not making weight for her event, after the Vinesh Phogat incident in Paris, are still fresh in the heart and minds.
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On Monday, when Mirabai stepped on the weigh-scale, the needle stopped at 47.8kg. “That, too, is a problem because there is a difference of 200 grams. We can benefit the most if we get 48 dead. So that’s our quest,” Sharma said.
