National Weightlifting Championships 2024: Mehak Sharma and Jagdish Vishwakarma set new records
The National Youth, Junior, and Senior Weightlifting Championships saw national records being rewritten in seven different weight divisions.
Weightlifting
Indian weightlifters competing at the National Weightlifting Championships 2024 continued their impressive show in Nagrota Bagwan, Himachal Pradesh, with Mehak Sharma and Jagdish Vishwakarma breaking multiple national records.
Lifting in the women’s +87kg category at the Rainbow Khelo India Residential Academy, the 29-year-old Mehak Sharma set new weightlifting national records in all three categories - snatch, clean-and-jerk and total.
Mehak Sharma lifted 244kg (104 snatch+140kg clean and jerk) and was followed by Martina Devi 232kg (100kg+132kg) and Manpreet Kaur 229kg (99kg+130kg) on the podium.
Martina Devi set the national records in the women’s +87kg clean-and-jerk (136kg) and total (237kg) at the IWF Junior World Weightlifting Championships 2024 in Leon, Spain, last month.
In the men’s 102kg, Jagdish Vishwakarma set new national records in snatch and total. The 30-year-old lifted a total of 353kg - 157kg in snatch and 196kg in clean and jerk. Bhinder Pal 335kg (150kg+185kg) won silver while R Ramkumar 334kg (154kg+180kg) settled for the bronze medal.
The IWLF National Youth, Junior, and Senior Weightlifting Championships began on Monday, October 7 and concluded on Sunday, October 13. National records were broken in seven different weight divisions.
Ajith Narayana (men’s 73kg), Harjinder Kaur (women’s 71kg), Harmanpreet Kaur (women’s 76kg), Muthupandi Raja (men’s 61kg), Rishikanta Singh (men’s 61kg) and Sufna Jasmin (women’s 45kg), all entered the record books earlier in the competition.
The National Championships featured around 860 athletes - 480 men and 380 women - competing across all age groups and categories. Several national records were also broken in junior and youth-level competitions.