National Games: Chandigarh’s Vanshita becomes 81 kg winner in women’s weightlifting event

It was in 2018 that the then Sri Guru Gobind Singh Senior Secondary School, Sector 35, student started her career in weightlifting at the Sector 42 Sports Complex under coach Karanveer Singh Buttar. With medals in Chandigarh Championships under her belt, the youngster won her first junior national title in the 76kg category in the Junior National Weightlifting Championships at Patiala in 2021. The youngster then won her first senior national title with a gold in 81kg category in the nationals held at Bhubaneswar, Orissa, in 2022. It was also the year when the youngster made her way into the national camp at NIS, Patiala, under chief coach Vijay Sharma.

Last year, Verma won the silver medal in the nationals at Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, with a new clean and jerk national record of 123kg. The same year she won the gold in 81kg category in the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championship in Noida before she won her first National Games title in Goa with a total lift of 217kg. Last year, Verma won her second senior national gold in Arunachal Pradesh with a total lift of 221kg, missing the national record of 222kg of Poonam Yadav.

“When I started under coach Karanveer Singh Buttar, my father Kulbhushan Verma would drop me to the weightlifting hall and encouraged me not to worry about my training. Winning the junior national title in 2021 was a special feeling as well as my first senior national title in Orissa in 2022. The Commonwealth Championships title as well as my maiden national games title also motivated me a lot. I have been training under Railways coach Christopher VA for the last two years and hopefully I will be able to break Poonam didi’s national record in the coming years,” Verma said.

Coach Buttar has seen his ward achieve glory and believes that the youngster will only improve. “When she started training under me at Sector 41 Sports Complex in 2018, I was impressed with her natural lift style. We worked upon her strength as well as clean lifting. She would always be ready to adapt to whatever changes we worked upon, including not pressing her arm much and keeping her back tight. For the last two years, she has been in the national camp as well as Indian Railways, and it’s nice to see her grow as a weight-lifter,” Buttar said.

Chandigarh Weightlifting Association vice president Kamaldeep Singh Bansal too was present at Dehradun along with Chandigarh Chef-de mission Rajiv Sharma. “It’s Chandigarh’s first gold medal in this National Games and we hope there will be more gold medals,” said Sharma.

Meanwhile, the Chandigarh men’s team won silver medal in the event. The team lost against Uttar Pradesh in the final on Sunday.