India’s top medal prospects at Tokyo Olympics and their main challengers: Mirabai Chanu
In her second Olympic Games, Mirabai Chanu is considered a favourite in the women’s 49kg category.
A talented weightlifter who has firmly established herself in the top echelons of the sport, Mirabai Chanu will be one of the favourites to bring India an Olympic medal.
A former world champion (in 2017) and Commonwealth Games gold medallist (2018) - she also holds the CWG record - Mirabai Chanu is currently seeded fourth in the women’s 49kg weightlifting category.
Effectively, it makes her the fourth-best bet to win the Olympic gold medal but it is important to add some context as to why the odds favour her.
Current third seed Ri Song Gum of North Korea will not be taking part as her nation decided to pull out of the Tokyo Olympics.
The top-two ranked weightlifters in the 49kg category are both Chinese, but Olympic rules state that only one weightlifter from a country can take part in a particular weight category.
This leaves Mirabai Chanu as one of the favourites and her performance ahead of the Tokyo Olympics promises a lot too.
At the Asian championships in April, Mirabai Chanu created a new world record in the clean-and-jerk section (119kg) and lifted her second-best effort in the snatch section (86kg) to win bronze. It also added up to her best-combined effort of 205kg.
The performance will serve as good motivation for Mirabai Chanu ahead of what will be her second Olympics. In Rio 2016, Mirabai admitted that nerves had gotten the better of her and she was unable to complete any of her snatch lifts.
Mirabai Chanu has since worked with a sports psychologist and raised her game to become one of the best in the business. Her competitors for the Olympic medal will pose quite a challenge though.
Zhihui Hou (China)
Top achievements: World champion (2018) and two-time Asian champion (2019, 2020)
What makes her special? Continuing the long legacy of Chinese weightlifters, Zhihui Hou is the current top seed for the Tokyo Olympics.
Zhihui Hou made a mark in her 49kg debut at the World championships in 2018, where she lifted a then-world record 208kg to win the gold medal. At the 2019 World Championships, Hou lifted 211kg, good enough for silver.
She has never lifted below 204kg at major events, which is proof of her big-game prowess.
Moreover, Zhihui Hou has warmed up perfectly for the Tokyo Olympics. At the Asian championships in April, she lifted a new world record of 96kg in the snatch. Combined with her 117kg clean-and-jerk, it added up to another world record of 213kg, which gave her the gold medal.
Huihua Jiang (China)
Top achievements: Two-time world champion (2015, 2019)
What makes her special? After winning consecutive golds at the Asian Youth Games (2013) and the Youth Olympics (2014), Huihua Jiang took the world by storm in 2015.
Competing in her maiden World championships as a 17-year-old, Huihua Jiang lifted 198kg to take the gold medal in the 48kg category. In the same year, she also won gold in the World junior championships.
Since shifting to the 49kg Olympic category, Huihua Jiang was pipped to gold by Zhihui Hou at the 2018 World championships. In 2019, Jiang won the gold and Hou silver.
Huihua Jiang also held the clean-and-jerk world record (118kg) before it was broken by Mirabai Chanu at the Asian Championships in April 2021.
It is set to be a straight shoot-out between second seed Huihua Jiang and Zhihui Hou to be China’s representative in the 49kg category at the Tokyo Olympics.
Elizabeth Jourdan Delacruz (USA)
Top achievements: IWF World Cup champion (2020); two-time Pan American champion (2019, 2020)
What makes her special? Another promising weightlifter, Elizabeth Jourdan Delacruz could spring a surprise on the Asian heavyweights at the Tokyo Olympics.
Currently seeded sixth, Delacruz had a challenging time in the youth categories, where her best result was 53kg silver at the 2018 World Junior Championships.
The American weightlifter initially took part in the 55kg category, where she won gold at the 2019 Pan American Championships, her first title at any level.
Delacruz switched to the 49kg category in 2019 and created an instant impression, winning the International Naim Suleymanoglu tournament before winning gold at the 2020 IWF World Cup.
Her best effort came recently at the 2020 Pan-American Championships, where she lifted 200kg to win the gold medal. Delacruz will certainly be a darkhorse in Tokyo 2020.