Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships 2023 to be held in India, Mirabai Chanu to skip meet
Jhilli Dalabehera, Lovepreet Singh and Purnima Pandey will be among the top names in action at Greater Noida. Junior and youth events will also be held simultaneously.
Weightlifting
The Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships 2023 will be held in India from July 12 to 16. Gautam Buddha University in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, will be the venue for the events.
Hosts India will field a 20-member contingent for the championships. Jhilli Dalabehera, a 2019 champion, Commonwealth Games 2022 bronze medallist Lovepreet Singh and 2021 champion Purnima Pandey will front the Indian challenge, according to the squad named by the Indian Weightlifting Federation on Thursday.
Popy Hazarika and Harjinder Kaur, who won silver medals at Commonwealth Championships 2021 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, will also compete. However, Tokyo Olympic silver medallist Mirabai Chanu and Commonwealth Games champions Jeremy Lalrinnunga and Achinta Sheuli have opted out.
Over 250 weightlifters from 20 countries will vie for medals at the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championship 2023.
Apart from the senior championship, junior and youth weightlifting events will also take place simultaneously. This will be the second time India is hosting the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships since its inception in 1980. The 2015 edition was held in Pune.
The last edition of the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships were held in 2021. India’s tally of 16 medals at the meet in Tashkent was the highest by any country in the competition. However, it was Canada who topped the overall medals tally, winning five gold medals compared to India’s four.
The Asian Junior and Youth Weightlifting Championship 2023 will also be hosted at Gautam Buddha University in Greater Noida from July 28 to August 5. India will be hosting the junior and youth-level Asian weightlifting championship for the first time.
Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships 2023: Indian team
Men: Mukund Aher (55kg), Shubham Todkar (61kg), T Madhavan (67kg), N Ajith (73kg), Ajay Singh (81kg), Amarjit Guru (89kg), Jagdish Vishwakarma (96kg), Harshad Wadekar (96kg), Harcharan Singh (102kg), Lovepreet Singh (109kg)
Women: Komal Kohar (45kg), Jhilli Dalabehera (49kg), Gyaneshwari Yadav (49kg), Shrabani Das (55kg), Popy Hazarika (59kg), Nirupama Devi (64kg), S Pallavi (64kg), Harjinder Kaur (71kg), Vanshita Verma (81kg), Purnima Pandey (+87kg)