Mirabai Chanu's World Championships gold could be game-changing moment in Indian weightlifting history

As Mirabai Chanu bowed and brought her palms together to form a namaste to the judges of the World Weightlifting Championship and the audience in the Anaheim Convention Center in Ahaheim, California, she pursed her lips. She stepped away from the barbell and broke into a wide smile – she had finally got into gold medal position on the charts.

And when Thailand’s rising star Thunya Sukcharoen was unable to match her 109kg clean and jerk lift, the Indian was confirmed as world champion, only the second from the country after Karnam Malleswari’s two gold medals in 1994 and 1995. A load was off her back and the sport had been hauled back into Indian public consciousness for the right reasons.

Now 23, she had raised visions of a good showing in Rio by claiming the national record (192kg) from her idol, Kunjarani Devi, in the run-up to the Olympic Games last year. But with a no-lift in the clean and jerk, she returned home empty-handed, her dreams shattered. The years of hard work in training camps and competition had come to a naught.

Had she kept her word and stayed away from competition after the fiasco in Rio, there would’ve been no world championship gold. It is just as well that the powers-that-be, coaches and selectors essentially, not only did not lose faith in the Railways athlete but also persuaded her to stay in the national camp on return from the Olympic Games.

At times, she would be gently reminded of her struggles that entailed long hours of cycling to a weightlifting centre to commence her romance with the sport; at other times, she would be goaded with talk of how much the country had invested in her at the national camps; and she would be reminded all the time of her immense talent and potential.

A win with a 186kg total in the National Championship in Nagercoil last December suggested that she had done well to overcome the Olympic nightmare. The Commonwealth record of 85kg in snatch during the Commonwealth Championship in Australia earlier this year when she won gold with a total of 189kg indicated that she was moving in the right direction.

Of course, the coaches were worried that she was unable to get a series of three clean and jerk lifts right and kept working on refining her technique. Crucially, they ensured that Mirabai Chanu would get tougher mentally as well. They realised that if she had to get a monkey off her back, she would need to erase memories of Rio.

As luck would have it, China and Turkey were among the nine nations that were not competing in Anaheim as a result of a ban imposed on them by the International Weightlifting Federation. It has ruled that any country that had three positive tests uncovered by the International Olympic Committee during the retesting of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Games would be banned.

Of course, it is not her fault that the competition was not up to scratch but the manner in which she held her nerve against the challenge posed by the world junior champion Thunya Sukcharoen was admirable. On her final visit to the arena, Mirabai Chanu lifted the bar weighing 109kg while the Thai lass failed, leaving the Indian winner by a mere kilogram’s margin.

Happily for her, unlike in the Olympic Games where she lifted only 82kg in snatch and succumbed to the pressure of having a lot to do in the clean and jerk, Mirabai Chanu ensured that she started well by clearing 83kg with her first lift and 85kg with the third to be in the second place, one kg behind Thunya Sukcharoen.

A total of 194kg would not have got her a medal in the 2004 or 2008 Olympic Games – of course she was still only getting drawn to the sport when growing up in her Nabakosing village 200km from Imphal. That total would have fetched her a bronze in the 2012 Games and a silver in Rio, making her only the second Indian to win an Olympic weightlifting medal.

Having moved to Imphal as a 14-year-old and then forcing her way into national camps, Mirabai Chanu has now broken free from her idol’s shadow and will be an inspiration, perhaps an even greater one that the path-breaking Kunjarani Devi. Yet, her world championship achievement goes beyond her personal battles and glory.

It has the portends of being a game-changing moment in Indian weightlifting history, perhaps even more defining than Malleswari’s bronze medal in the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Back in the 1990s, the sport was still new and women from few nations would enter competition, Karnam Malleswari (two gold and two bronze in world championships) and Kunjarani Devi (seven-time silver medallist in world championships) caught the imagination of not a few.

Mirabai Chanu’s success comes in more challenging times. The success of the badminton players like Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu, the telecast of the Indian cricket team’s surge to the final of the ICC Women’s World Cup in England, the Indian women hockey team’s victory in the Asia Cup appeared to draw young girls to take up these sports, weightlifting needed a shot in the arm.

Besides, the sport’s record on the doping front in India has not been good. As many as 192 of the 791 athletes banned by the National Anti-Doping Agency for doping violations are weightlifters. Sanamacha Chanu faced the ignominy of testing positive at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Worse, the national federation was banned by the international body in 2004, 2006 and 2009.

Under such circumstances, there could be no better fillip to weightlifting than Mirabai Chanu’s gold in the World Championship. The Manipur lass ensured that she would no longer be weighed down by memories of a no lift in the Olympic Games. And, at once, she has got weightlifting back into collective public consciousness – this time for the right reasons.