CHENNAI: Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Mirabai Chanu returned to competitive weightlifting after more than a year and as was expected, she clinched the gold medal in the 48kg at the Commonwealth Championships in Ahmedabad on Monday. En route to her gold, she also set new Commonwealth Championships records in snatch (84kg), clean and jerk (109kg) and total (193kg).
The six lift attempts and her overall return to the lifting platform since the 2024 Paris Olympics, however, were far from a smooth ride. She faltered in her opening snatch attempt of 84kg. She cleared it in the next attempt but could not lift 89kg in her third and last snatch attempt. With the snatch section not her forte, the 31-year-old 2017 world champion was expected to improve her performance in the clean and jerk. She opened up with a 105kg lift and bettered it to 109kg in the next attempt. She tried for 113kg in her final attempt but couldn’t heave it.
Despite the struggles where she succeeded in only three attempts out of total six, she was way ahead of her competitors. Her closest rival, Irene Henry of Malaysia, who lifted 161kg (73kg+88kg), won the silver medal while Wales’ Nikole Roberts with an overall lift of 150kg (70kg+80kg) took home the bronze. Given the field, Mirabai, who finished fourth at the Paris Games, was literally competing with herself. But that would not be the case when she competes at the 2025 World Championships scheduled at Forde, Norway from October 2 to 11.
To give some context to her performance, Mirabai lifted 199kg (88+111) at the Paris Games in the 49kg and missed out on a bronze medal by just 1kg. With the International Weightlifting Federation revising the weight categories, Mirabai had to switch to 48kg, the division she used to compete till 2018.
It was in the same weight category, she won a gold medal at the 2017 World Championships. She also finished at top in the same division at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. But the weights she lifted in both events were better than her present showing. In the Worlds, she lifted 194kg (85+109) — one kilograms more than her current performance. At the 2018 CWG, she heaved a total weight of 196kg (86+110) — again three kilograms more than her lift in Ahmedabad.
Weightlifting head coach Vijay Sharma, however, believed the tournament was just a test event for Mirabai as she has changed her weight category and returned to competitive lifting after more than a year. “It’s a test event. We were just checking how much she can lift,” Sharma responded when asked how satisfied he was with his ward’s performance.