Let the Games begin!
Ace lifter Mirabai Chanu could win India its first medal in Tokyo when action begins on Saturday
MUTED EVENT
Belated and beleaguered, the virus-delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics finally opened Friday with cascading fireworks and made-for-TV choreography that unfolded in a near-empty stadium, a colorful but strangely subdued ceremony
ALL EYES ON INDIA
Athletes marched into Tokyo’s National Stadium in their usual parade. A total of 19 Indian athletes, including flag-bearers boxer MC Mary Kom and men’s hockey team captain Manpreet Singh, participated in the ceremony.
GUWAHATI: It may not be easy for Mirabai Chanu to let go of the memories of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. The weightlifter from Imphal was one of India’s medal hopes when she, perhaps bogged down by the pressure of competing in the world’s biggest sporting event, failed to clear all three of her clean-and-jerk attempts in the women’s 48kg category. Chanu managed a lift of 82kg in the snatch event before the clean and jerk fouls ended the Games on a bitter note for her.
Since the disappointment of four years ago, Chanu has taken big strides in the sport, and is firmly established as one of the medal contenders in the 49kg category at the Tokyo Olympics.
“After Rio Olympics, I broke down when I could not bring home a medal even after working so hard in training. I was unable to understand why I failed. It was a tough period,” Chanu told reporters in April. “It was my first Olympics. There was so much pressure because of the expectations. People were expecting a medal from me,” Chanu said.
Chanu was 22 at the time. Working with psychologists helped her regain her confidence.
“Players need psychologists a lot. Sometimes we feel really dull, we don’t feel like training or if we get injured during training, we feel low. At that time a psychologist helps a lot. They motivate us,” Chanu said.
A year after the Rio debacle, she won her first major international gold at the 2017 World Weightlifting Championships in Anaheim, USA. A few months later, she clinched the gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia.
Working on her technique and strength, along with her mental fortitude, she began to lift heavier and heavier. Earlier this year at the Asian Championships in Tashkent, the Manipuri broke the world record for the highest lift in women’s 49kg clean-and-jerk category by lifting 119kg (she had fluffed one 104kg and two 106kg lifts in Rio). Her combined total of 205kg in clean-and-jerk and snatch in Tashkent was a personal best.
Chanu will, however, be looking to improving her lifts in snatch, in which she has a personal best of 88kg, well below the world record of 96kg. Medals are handed out for combined totals at the Olympics, and not separately for snatch and cleanand-jerk.
Hou Zhihui of China, who has won gold medals in World Cup, World Championships and Asian Championships and also holds the snatch and combined world records, will start as the favourite for the gold on July 24. But what significantly boosts Chanu’s hopes of securing a medal when she takes the stage on Saturday is that the field will not feature two big names. Zhihui’s compatriot Jiang Huihua, who won the gold at the 2019 World Championships, will miss out since only one lifter from a country is allowed in each category. After the withdrawal of North Korea from the Tokyo Olympics, another medal contender, Ri Song-gum, will also not feature in the event. This make Chanu the second seed in the 49kg category, through Jourdan Delacruz of the US, who has managed multiple combined efforts of 200kg or more in international events and won a World Cup gold last year, will be a strong medal contender as well.
Despite the pandemic, the 26-year-old Indian weightlifter’s preparations have been on course. Last year, she went to the US on a two-month training programme as part of her Tokyo preparations. Chanu also worked on the lower back pain that was causing her problems in recent years. Since last year, she has been working with Dr. Aaron Horschig, a physiotheraphist in St. Louis and a former weightlifter.
“After I started training in lockdown, the back problem resurfaced. There has been huge improvement after working with Dr. Horschig. My training methods and routines have changed. If I do a heavy workout one day, I take it light the next day. He made me do a lot of rehabilitation exercises, for my shoulder, back and on various movements,” she said earlier this year.
The focus in recent times, Chanu said, has been to improve her performance in snatch, where she is a bit off the pace compared to her main rivals. “I have felt more comfortable in clean and jerk from the beginning. I am more confident. In snatch, my technique was not very good so I could not go higher in weights,” she said.
Overcoming that hurdle may be her key to Olympic glory.