Chanu strives to give her best at CWG

Patiala, June 26: It won’t be surprising if diminutive Mirabai Chanu, stands atop the podium, flashing her radiant smile, after winning a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games on July 30. After all, she will enter Birmingham, as title favourite.

Chanu’s personal best is 207kg (88kg+119kg) which is far better than the best effort of Nigeria’s Stella Kingsley, who will be her nearest rival and has managed only 168kg (72kg+96kg) till date.

Chanu’s legend has only grown since the last edition of the CWG. She has added an Olympic silver, an Asian Championship bronze and a world record to her kitty.

It is not baffling when she avowed that she herself will be her real competition in Birmingham and not her rivals.

“CWG will be easy for me. I will be fighting with myself,” Chanu, who already has a silver (2014) and a gold (2018) at CWG, asserts politely.

“There is not much competition in CWG, but that doesn’t mean there is no competition. I have to give my best performance keeping in mind the future tournaments,” she said during a candid chat at Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports (NIS).

Since there won’t be competition, Chanu has bigger targets in mind.

She is eager to rewrite her own clean and jerk world record of 119kg. “I am thinking of attempting 120kg in the CWG.”

The former world champion also wants to breach the much-anticipated 90kg mark in the snatch section, which she confesses has become somewhat of a mental block.

“Yes (it has become a mental block). We have planned to lift 91kg or 92kg at the CWG. Hopefully, it will happen.”

But lifting close to twice your body weight is easier said than done specially when Chanu still struggles with a shoulder imbalance.

Earlier this month, she failed to improve her snatch lift, unable to hoist 89kg twice at a domestic event due to her back.

“My back became stiff (tight) 2-3 days before going. The journey to Nagrota was also five hours. We went form Patiala to Chandigarh a day before the tournament, then took a flight from Chandigarh, which was also late. So the back became more tight.”

Aware of her weakness in snatch, Chanu has worked on tweaking her technique.

“I haven’t gone above 88kg. That is the weight I have set. But training wise right now I am better placed than I was at the Olympics.

“To lift 90kg in a competition, we set the weight between 80-90kg which we lift consistently everyday. It’s not like we lift 90kg everyday,” she explains.

Her personal best of 88kg is 8kg less than Tokyo gold medallist China’s Hou Zhihui’s world record lift of 96kg.

● Chanu’s personal best is 207kg (88kg+119kg) which is far better than the best effort of Nigeria’s Stella Kingsley, who will be her nearest rival and has managed only 168kg (72kg+96kg) till date.