Mirabai Chanu to give world weightlifting championships a miss
The Tokyo 2020 silver medallist is working on new techniques to improve her snatch category.
India’s Mirabai Chanu, who won the silver medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, has opted to skip the World Weightlifting Championships 2021, to be held from December 7 to 17 at Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
The Manipuri weightlifter is a former world champion, having won the gold medal in the 2017 edition.
Mirabai Chanu’s decision to withdraw from the world championships, according to a report by the Times of India, comes after she failed to master a new snatch technique in time for the event.
She has been working on honing the new skill with national chief coach Vijay Sharma at the National Institute of Sports (NIS) Patiala since August.
In weightlifting, the snatch is a type of lift where a weightlifter hoists the barbell from the ground to an overhead position in one continuous motion. In competitions, athletes are required to perform two types of lifts – the snatch and clean and jerk.
Interestingly, Mirabai Chanu holds the world record for clean and jerk (119kg) in the women’s 49kg category but her personal best in snatch is only 88kg while the world record stands at 96kg.
At Tokyo 2020, too, Mirabai Chanu managed a 115kg in clean and jerk – just 1kg less than gold medallist Hou Zhihui of China. The Indian’s snatch score of 87kg, however, was seven short of the Olympic champion.
Mirabai Chanu reportedly is working on a new technique to improve her snatch category score and increase her gold medal chances for the Asian Games 2022 in China. She had missed the last Asian Games in 2018 due to a back injury.
Mirabai Chanu, the second Indian weightlifter to win an Olympic medal after Karnam Malleswari, has been out of competitive action since the Tokyo Olympics. She was scheduled to compete at the Commonwealth Championships in Singapore in October but the event was called off due to COVID-19.
The Indian is expected to compete at the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham next July, where she will be the reigning champion. She automatically qualifies for the CWG courtesy of her world ranking. The Asian Games will follow in September.