Sanjita surmounts odds to lift India’s second gold Teenager Lather youngest lifter to bag CWG medal
STORY OF GRIT After battling to top spot in 53kg, Manipuri lifter recounts the road back from injury
: Sanjita Chanu Khumukcham’s eyes welled up as she stood atop the podium on Friday with the gold she won in the women’s 53kg weight category.
This was India’s second gold in this edition and also the second for Sanjita in Commonwealth Games.
The tears were of relief mixed with happiness over having achieved her aim. Relief because she had come through a bruising battle with Laura Dika Toua of Paupa New Guinea (PNG). Sanjita had overcome a torrid time while recovering from injury which required her to move to a higher weight category.
Not only did she manage to add another Commonwealth Games gold to the one she had won in 48kg class at 2014 in Glasgow, she also proved her detractors wrong.
Sanjita had suffered a back injury after the Glasgow Games and struggled to recover. On comeback, she did not have good results and had to move to a higher weight category and work hard to get into the top bracket.
“A lot of people had doubts whether I would win a medal again. I had another injury during the World Championships in 2017. I had to work harder, had lot of help from my coaches and federation. I had to spend extra time with the physio, nearly half-anhour before every training session to get ready.
Sanjita got into the fray at 81kg in snatch and lifted it easily, which straight away put her at the top. But Loa Dika Toua was the Games record holder in this category and the one to beat. The PNG lifter, gold medallist in 2014 and silver medallist in Melbourne, started with 78kg but was capable of going higher.
Sanjita went for 83kg and raised it to 84kg to set a new Games record that sealed her the top spot as Toua attempted 82kg but failed to completed the lift.
Though she had a slight edge over Dika Toua, Sanjita had to do better in clean and jerk because her rival held the Commonwealth Championships record. Sanjita started at 104kg while Dika Toua, having done 102, decided to raise the bar to 109 to put pressure on Sanjita, who had lifted 108 in her second turn.
However, the PNG player could not complete the lift. In her third turn, Sanjita attempted 112kg in order to put it beyond her rival. But Sanjita failed leaving Dika Toua to make a last-ditch attempt at lifting 113kg. Her effort was futile and sealed gold for Sanjita.
As Samoa’s Viapava Ioane asked for weights totalling 175kg for his second attempt in the men’s 69kg weightlifting contest, India’s Deepak Lather watched with head in his hands.
Lather was third in the standings with a total lift of 295kg following a below-par snatch in which he could only manage 136 in his second attempt and missed 138, even though he had done 142 in training.
The 18-year-old from Shadipur, near Rohtak in Haryana had failed to clear 162kg in clean and jerk and by lifting 167kg Ioane leapfrogged to fourth spot, creating a gap of nearly 10kg in snatch.
By lifting 175, which he had reportedly done in training, the 29-year-old from Samoa would have reached 300kg and would have surged to top, pushing back Gareth Evans (Wales) and Indika Dissanayake of Sri Lanka to second and third.
Lather, participating in his first Commonwealth Games, would have finished fourth. Evans eventually took gold while Dissanayake took silver.
The bronze made Lather the youngest Indian lifting medallist ever and a star to watch out for in future. He is a Naik Subedar with the Army.
GOLD COAST GOLDCOAST:
finished sixth at the Athens Olympics four years later. Dika
Toua has inspired a generation of weightlifters in PNG and two of her sisters have followed her. “Every time I come home with a medal, it inspires kids, especially girls. If I can do it, they can too,” she said after failing to overtake India’s Sanjita Chanu. On Friday, Dika Toua was cheered by her family and friends who were in the stands.
Her next aim is to do well at the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. Women’s 53kg: Sanjita Chanu (Gold); Women’s 58kg: Saraswati Rout (DNF); Men’s 69kg: Deepak Lather (Bronze)