AHMEDABAD: Competing in a new weight class, Mirabai Chanu showed little nerves as she smashed three Commonwealth records on way to winning the gold medal at the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships, here on Monday.An Olympic silver medallist (Tokyo 2021) in the 49kg class, Mirabai achieved a snatch of 84kg in her second attempt, having failed in the opening bid. In the final attempt, she increased the weight to 87kg but was unsuccessful.The diminutive lifter from Manipur enthralled the raucous crowd at the venue with a superb clean and jerk lift of 109kg in the second attempt for a total lift of 193kg. A bid to increase the weight to 113 kg was successful, albeit outside the permissible time limit.On the challenges she has faced in returning to competition after a year, that too in a reduced weight class, Mirabai told TOI, “I didn’t set much of a target as this is my first international competition in the 48kg class. The challenge was to control the weight and deliver a good performance. It felt very good to come back to 48kg. To bring the weight down was a big thing for me. So, coming here, I knew what more I needed to do to improve,” she said.Coach Vijay Sharma was happy with the results but insisted that the Khel Ratna recipient needed to improve on her jerk technique ahead of the World Weightlifting Championship in Norway in October.“She was trying for 113kg in clean and jerk, but it didn’t happen. But I was just checking how her body will react to lifting that weight,” Sharma said, adding, “We have to improve again on our jerk. The clean was good, but the jerk was not that good. We have to work on that in the remaining four weeks.”The focus for the Imphal-born athlete, who recently turned 31, was to control the weight and keep the muscles under control. “I had to control my diet to control the weight and keep the muscles under control, because our muscles can be lost because of weight loss. Maintaining that is very challenging. I’ve controlled the diet as much as possible and focused more on the exercises so that the muscles do not get loose after controlling the weight.”
Payal, Dharmajyoti set records
In the youth girls’ 48kg class, India’s Payal set a new Commonwealth record with a total lift of 166 kg (73 + 93kg). Bhavani Reddy claimed silver with 158kg (66 + 92kg).In the junior women’s 48kg, Soumya Sunil Dalvi scripted two Commonwealth records by lifting 177kg (76 + 101). Nigeria’s Ruth Nyong took silver with 167 kg, while Irene lifted 161 kg for bronze.Preetismita Bhoi took gold in the youth girls’ 44kg with 150 kg (63 + 87), while Canada’s Lexi Fung and Sri Lanka’s Yashini Gedar bagged silver and bronze with 138 kg and 104 kg respectively.Dharmajyoti Dewgarhia improved his own record by 1kg in clean and jerk and 2kg in total on way in the youth boys’ 56kg gold. He effected a snatch of 97kg and a clean & jerk of 127 kg.
