It is now a norm that if Mirabai Chanu participates in a competition, she will win a medal. In a nation starved of champions, Mira is one of those bankable assets who never fails to deliver. And that’s where the hype starts to build. The nation expects a medal each time she steps up to lift. The Asian Weightlifting Championship in Jinju, Korea is no different. With Mira declaring her intention to lift 90 kgs in the snatch, something she hasn’t done before, the expectations have only gone up in the last week for so.
And that’s where we are going a tad wrong. As coach Vijay Sharma helped put things in context, “This competition is not about winning a medal. It doesn’t really matter. It is one of those compulsory competitions that you need to be part of in the Olympic qualification cycle, and hence we are here. We will just see if all the things that we are working on in training are working or not. Within three months, we have the world championship and the Asian Games. We need to choose when to peak and when to load our best athletes. This isn’t the competition to do so.”
To make things clear: If Mirabai doesn’t push herself this time round, it isn’t a big deal. Rather, it is part of the larger plan to peak in time for the Asian Games, the only medal she is still missing in her illustrious cabinet. Having said that, it’s Mira and, with her, you never know. Despite it being a routine event, she still wants to touch 90 kgs in snatch and if she does so, she could well be on the podium.
The Mira story really started in Rio 2016. Multiple failed lifts and Mirabai Chanu, a major medal hope, was all of a sudden brought back to Earth. And in India, we love to castigate our athletes who fail. Chanu was no different. Why was she being indulged? Did she really warrant the money that she was getting? A distraught Chanu was about to quit the sport and was, in fact, received by a friend who she stayed with on her return from Rio to get her mojo back.
Sport is perhaps the only thing in life that allows a person an opportunity to fail in public, and thereafter to also win in public. Chanu had failed in Rio. Now, it was her turn to succeed and make it back in Tokyo. And she did. A fantastic start in the snatch set it up and by the time Chanu had stepped on to the floor for the Clean and Jerk, we knew a medal was coming. Clean and Jerk is anyway her pet event, and the only competition she had was from the Chinese who bagged gold. To her credit, she did raise the bar and give the Chinese girl a run for her money.
Chanu’s is a story of empowerment more than anything. Inspired by Kunjarani Devi, a legend in her part of the world, Chanu had no plans of being a weightlifter. All she was doing was lifting wooden logs from the nearby forest to bring back home to light fires at the peak of winter. How can a girl her age lift such heavy logs was the question asked by many? Chanu, however, was unfazed. She enjoyed the challenge of lifting weights, and that’s when her mother spotted something special in her child. It was Chanu’s mother who pushed her to be an athlete, and is understandably delighted at what her daughter has achieved since.
Let’s also make one thing clear. Chanu is not a surprise winner. An Olympic medal followed by a world championship silver, and a CWG gold in between, don’t happen by chance. She has done well consistently across world competitions, and has successfully pushed the bar on the biggest stages of all.
Chanu wasn’t born into privilege, and is very much the girl next door who dared to dream. In fact, she is the idea of India that continues to inspire us all. From lifting logs as a child to lifting the morale of a nation, Mirabai Chanu is now part of India’s sporting folklore.
What she has also done is lift the morale of the entire team. Now we have a young Jeremy and a much improved Bindiyarani Devi who are trying hard to emulate Mira.
While leaving India, Mirabai spoke about touching the 90kg mark in snatch in Jinju. And unlike coach Sharma, she isn’t really bothered about pushing herself time and again. And why should she be? She is the first Indian weightlifter to win a silver medal at the world’s greatest sporting spectacle. And very Mirabai, it has not changed her one bit. But isn’t that also part of her charm? Something very uniquely Indian? Just like saying the 90kg will indeed happen. And soon.
While Neeraj Chopra will try to breach the 90m mark in Doha, Mira will want to touch the 90kg in Jinju come Friday. If you are an Indian sports fan, it is all about the nervous 90s and our very best athletes’ determination to beat those marks.