Saikhom MIRABAI CHANU

Always drawn to sports, Mirabai Chanu initially wanted to take up archery until stumbling into a weightlifting hall at a local sports complex in Imphal.

A natural at the sport, Mirabai quickly had an idol to try and emulate, finding inspiration from the exploits of India's most decorated female weightlifter, Kunjarani Devi.

Mirabai Chanu sprung to international prominence at the age of 20, when she bagged the silver medal in the 48kg category at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Scotland.

At the 2017 world weightlifting championships in Anaheim, USA, Mirabai Chanu became the first Indian weightlifter in over two decades to claim a gold medal. Her effort in the 48kg category was the first since Sydney 2000 bronze medallist Karnam Malleswari’s title runs in 1994 and 1995.

She followed that up with a gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, an event that saw Mirabai smash the Games record in ‘snatch’, ‘clean and jerk’ and ‘total’. But an injury to her lower back would draw curtains on what was shaping up for a spectacular season.

It meant that Mirabai had to sit out of the Asian Games and the world championships in 2018, and then spend nearly a year away from the floor, recuperating from the injury.

It was only in 2019 that Mirabai returned to compete at the world championships in Thailand. She could only manage a fourth-place finish, but it was a memorable outing at the Pattaya event as she breached the 200kg mark for the first time in her career.

At the 2021 Asian weightlifting championships in Tashkent in April, Mirabai Chanu set a new world record in the clean and jerk with a lift of 119kgs.

It set her up perfectly for the Tokyo Olympics, where the silver medal lifted a huge burden off her shoulders with a 202kg (87kg snatch + 115kg clean and jerk) effort.

A year later, Mirabai Chanu entered the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham as an outright favourite and won the gold with a total lift of 201kg (snatch – 88kg; clean and jerk – 113 kg). With her effort, Mirabai Chanu shattered the previous Commonwealth Games record of 191kg in the category set by herself at Gold Coast 2018.

At the world championships the same year, Mirabai Chanu, though struggling with a wrist injury, clinched a silver medal with a combined lift of 200kg (87kg snatch + 113kg clean and jerk).

Mirabai Chanu, though not fully fit, competed at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou but finished fourth with a combined lift of 191kg. She improved the mark to 199kg at the Paris 2024 Olympics but, unfortunately, fell just 1kg short of a podium finish.