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Journalism of Courage
Mirabai Chanu’s squeal echoed in a half-empty arena. After two hours of competition, it came down to her final attempt; the last chance to convert a World Championship bronze medal into an assured silver. The five-foot-tall wonder woman, weighing 48kg, squatted with iron at 115kg, more than twice her bodyweight. She growled, winced, and shivered as she came up and balanced the barbell on her shoulders.
Sathish Sivalingam, a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist, once described what an athlete goes through at this stage of the lift. “Your windpipe is compressed, so you can’t breathe. Your nervous system practically stops functioning, so no signal reaches your brain. You start feeling dizzy. Then, there’s a complete blackout,” he had said. “It’s insanely tough.”
Mirabai paused as the barbell rested on her shoulder, trying to muster all her strength before she would try to lunge, stand on her feet and lift the metal over her head. Doubts persisted at that point — does she still have it in her to fling the heavy barbell over her head?
It had been four years since Mirabai lifted 115kg. The last time she did that, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, she returned with a silver medal. Another silver was in the offing if she would complete a successful lift on Thursday night. But a lot had changed in the intervening years.
In Tokyo, Mirabai was in her prime — and the permissible weight in the category was 49kg, a kilo more than what’s currently allowed. Now 31, she spent as much time — if not more — on the surgeon’s table as the weightlifting platform, nursing the many injuries that her coach Vijay Sharma called ‘professional hazard’.
One thing that hadn’t changed was the stomach for a fight.
The competition for silver and bronze was a two-way race between Mirabai and Thanyathon Sukcharoen of Thailand, given that the Olympic champion from China, Hou Zhihui, wasn’t competing in Norway, and the eventual gold medallist, North Korea’s Ri Song Gum, who was in a league of her own after she tallied a total of 213 kg (91 in snatch and 122 in clean and jerk).
Thanyathon had a 4kg advantage over Mirabai after the snatch section, where the Indian had just one good lift of 84kg. “I had to cover a lot of ground in clean and jerk,” Mirabai says. “So I had no option but to go all out in my attempts.”
When Thanyathon, who managed a best of 110kg, could not lift 113kg, it opened the door for Mirabai. A successful lift of 115kg would give Mirabai a silver that few outside her inner circle would have seen coming. With that in mind, the former clean and jerk world record holder went out one last time.
Summoning all her strength, she lifted the metal weighing 115kg over her head and the moment three white dots appeared on the screen — signalling a clean lift — she flashed that infectious smile of hers. Silver medal secured, she jogged from the platform to the tunnel and embraced coach Sharma.
Mirabai thus tallied 199kg (84 in snatch and 115 in clean and jerk) to win her third World Championship medal, in addition to the gold and silver she won earlier. “I would rate this as one of my best performances,” Mirabai says. “I had lifted this weight (115kg) in 49kg. But to repeat it in 48kg after all that has happened in the last four years… this medal is immensely satisfying.”
The phrase ‘all that has happened’ is a reference to the physical and psychological pain that she has endured in the last four years. In July, when she was preparing for her return, Mirabai recalled how pain had been her constant companion during this period. Only companion, many times. Mirabai wasn’t just talking about the physical struggles, which have been many. Her team, led by Sharma, has somehow kept her fragile body — broken and torn at various joints and tissues — together. That morning, she was reflecting on the deep, lingering psychological pain her previous two appearances on the big stage had left.
Last year, Mirabai travelled to Paris with the hope of securing a second successive podium finish. It ended in a cruel fourth place, a result of her spending as much time — if not more — in an orthopaedic clinic getting herself fixed as she did training. That was a result of an injury that aggravated at the Asian Games the year before, in 2023, which resulted in another brutal fourth-place finish.
On Thursday, she overcame those twin heartbreaks and served a reminder that she’s still around.
