New Delhi: One of Mirabai Chanu’s most heartening traits is her ability to smile in the face of adversity. Be it the Tokyo high or the Paris heartbreak, Chanu’s ear-to-ear grin has remained a constant, and it did make a generous appearance when one asked her to reflect on her performance at this year’s Olympics.
“Recalling disappointments is never easy, but I will give it a shot,” she began, her smile intact. “There’s no point in brooding over what’s done. It is important for athletes to dust themselves up after a failure and start over.”
A fourth-place finish is often more than a failure though. It’s sport’s most agonising result, more so when one misses it by a whisker. Chanu, a silver medallist at Tokyo Olympics, entered Paris as one of India’s brightest medal hopes, but warding off the challenge from China’s defending champion Hou Zhihui and Thaialnd’s 2021 world champion Surodchana Khambao was always going to be a tall order.
“Missing the medal by only 1kg did hurt a lot, but I can draw satisfaction from the fact that I did everything in my capacity to win a medal. I have been dealing with injuries throughout this cycle due to which my training suffered. I also had menstrual cramps which made things tougher for me in Paris.”
The 30-year-old Indian had aggregated a lift of 200kg or more only once in the Paris cycle and was yet to fully recover from the hip tendonitis injury she sustained at the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023. Given the context, a 199kg lift was not a bad effort — it would have won her a bronze at Tokyo Olympics — but Zhihui (206kg), Romania’s Mihaela Cambei (205kg), and Khambo (200kg) took the top three spots. The last time all three medallists hoisted 200kgs or more in the lowest women’s division at the Olympics was 20 years back when Turkey’s Nurcan Taylan (210kg), China’s Li Zhuo (205kg), and Thailand’s Aree Wiratthaworn (200kg) all went past the mark in Athens. Incidentally even then, an Indian, Kunjarani Devi, had taken the fourth spot.
“On any other day, in any other competition, 199kg could have won me a medal,” Chanu said. But the fact remains that even at the continental level, more and more athletes in Chanu’s division are increasingly breaching the 200kg threshold. In Hangzhou, for instance, both the gold and silver medallists — North Korea’s Ri Song-gum (216kg) and China’s Jiang Huihua (213kg) — eased past 200kgs, a first since 2002 Busan Asian Games. Chanu also needs to snatch 90kgs or more to ease the pressure in the clean and jerk rounds.
“I know I need to raise my game if I am to win a medal in Los Angeles,” she said. While that is still four years away and it remains to be seen if Chanu’s battered body will have enough to last that long, 2026 Asian Games in Japan’s Aichi-Nagoya are a realistic and unfulfilled target.
With that in mind, Chanu has started taking baby steps towards achieving peak fitness. Post-Paris, she spent some weeks at her home. Chanu flew to St Louis in USA in October for 10 days to resume her sessions with Dr Aaron Horschig. She has started lifting light weights only recently as focus remains firmly on recovery.
“The right thigh is still a work in progress for her. She can win a medal anywhere in the world if she is injury free. Since there are no major competitions in sight, we are focussing on some strength work and progressive overload,” national coach Vijay Sharma said.
Chanu also skipped the 2024 World Championships in Bahrain but travelled to the competition “to have a closer look at my opponents.”
“I don’t want to rush things. Over-training or wrong training can lead to muscle imbalances and more injuries, so we are taking it slow. As of now, focus is on strengthening the weaker muscles while allowing my thigh to rest,” she said.
The ace weightlifter has also shifted her training base from NIS Patiala to Modinagar near Ghaziabad where Sharma runs his academy. “There is no word on the national camp yet, so I figured this is the best arrangement. I have no immediate plans to go to Patiala,” Chanu concluded.
