Weighing her chances one lift at a time

Mirabai Chanu has made an inspiring comeback from her Asian Games injury last year and is now training fiercely for the Paris Olympics under the watchful eyes of coach Vijay Sharma.

Shining beacon: Having won a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Mirabai Chanu will be one of India’s biggest prospects in Paris. | Photo Credit: SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP

Before her training sessions at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala, Mirabai Chanu takes off her shoes and places them on a footwear rack next to the main entrance of the weightlifting hall, at the other end of which there is a multi-faith shrine where she prays to the idol of Hanuman — the Hindu patron deity of strength.

About a year ago, the idol was located at the other end of the hall where the rack now stands. It’s something that Mirabai’s coach, Vijay Sharma, often reminds her of.

“We got the weightlifting hall renovated last year just before the Asian Games. That’s when we moved the shrine to the other end of the hall, and where the shrine was, we replaced it with a shoe rack. I always tell Mira, one day people will worship you, and the next day they’ll treat you like a pair of shoes. The only thing you can do is devote yourself to your work and leave the rest to God,” he says.

Having won a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the petite four-foot-eleven, 29-year-old from Manipur will be one of India’s biggest prospects in Paris in about a month-and-a-half.

A second Olympic medal will place her among the best at the pinnacle of Indian sports history. She was the toast of the country after her Tokyo win, but she and her coach knew from experience just how fleeting all that adulation can be.

Less than a year ago, after competing in the 49kg category at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, Mirabai returned to India in a wheelchair. She had been dealing with pain in her right hip during warm-ups but had still opted to compete. It was clear she was nowhere near her best.

After a snatch lift opener of 83kg, followed by two failed attempts, she registered a 108kg opener in the clean and jerk section. At that point, her total read 191kg, which placed her fourth behind Thailand’s Thanyathon Sukcharoen, who had lifted 199kg.

Planning to overtake her, Mirabai loaded 117kg on the bar for another clean and jerk attempt. After her first lift failed, she went for it once again. As she spread her palms around the bar and squatted, lifting it onto her collarbones, she crumbled, falling down and lying on her side, the bar dropping in front of her. The broadcast cut to her competitors backstage, but behind them, one could see Mirabai being carried away by one of India’s coaching staff.

On the comeback trail: While losing six months of training might be a near-fatal career blow, Mirabai managed to recover almost entirely. | Photo Credit: SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP

It was one of the lowest moments in her career. Sharma says, “If we have to compare it to anything, I think it would have to be what happened at the 2016 Rio Olympics.”

That’s when Mirabai, despite being one of the medal favourites, did not even post a total after failing all her lifts in the clean and jerk category. “That time we just finished without a medal; the scars were only in our mind. This time (Asian Games), Mira had an injury as well,” says Sharma.

When she arrived at New Delhi airport, Mirabai was still in a wheelchair. Travelling along with her was the Indian shooting contingent, buoyed by a record medal haul. As the media surrounded them, Sharma wheeled her away to catch another flight to Mumbai, where she would meet Dr. Dinshaw Pardiwala, an orthopaedic surgeon specialised in sports injuries.

Before that fateful lift, Sharma remembers asking Mirabai whether she should withdraw from the competition. For Mirabai, though, the answer was obvious. She’d won medals in every other competition she had taken part in — gold at the 2017 World Championships, silver in the Tokyo Olympics, gold at the Commonwealth Games, and a bronze at the 2020 Asian Championships.

READ: Mirabai Chanu finishes third in group B of IWF World Cup, set to qualify for Paris Olympics

The only medal missing in her collection was the Asian Games; she’d missed out once before at the 2018 edition in Jakarta, where she had to withdraw because of a back injury.

“My dream was to win a medal in the Asian Games. I really wanted it. When I started my career, my coach told me that it is the biggest event in the sport because the best female weightlifters are all from Asia. After I got injured, I wondered if perhaps it was not my destiny to win this medal. I kept wondering — why did this happen? Of all competitions, why did it have to happen at the Asian Games?”

Sharma says he had similar questions as well. “We were in perfect shape. We had been training in the USA for several weeks, working with Aaron Horschig (a strength and conditioning expert). I was so confident that she would get a medal in Hangzhou,” he recalls.

Now, though, with less than a year to go for the Paris Olympics, there wasn’t even any assurance whether Mirabai would be able to compete again. “When I returned to India, I couldn’t even walk. There was so much pain inside my right hip that I couldn’t put any weight on my foot. I had to be carried down the stairs by my coach. There was a lot of pain because it was inside my joint,” she says.

Centre of attention: Mirabai was the toast of the country after her Tokyo win, but she and her coach knew from experience just how fleeting all that adulation can be.  | Photo Credit: Getty Images

Once the pain started to subside in a few days, Mirabai found some hope. “I honestly thought her career was finished when we went and met Dr. Pardiwala. She couldn’t even put any weight on her right foot in Hangzhou, and she wasn’t even able to walk when she first came to Mumbai. Within a couple of days, though, she was able to put weight on her foot. Once she started walking, we knew it wasn’t nearly as severe. That gave some hope that perhaps the injury wasn’t nearly as bad as we first thought,” says Sharma.

The injury remains a mystery. “At first, Dr. Pardiwala thought that Mira might need surgery, so he got every test done, including multiple MRIs and full-body scans. But no abnormality was detected. Even now, we can’t tell what the issue was,” says Sharma.

While they couldn’t diagnose the issue, Mirabai was advised rest and to rehabilitate her hip until at least the end of the year. She wasn’t allowed to put any strain on her lower body and was only able to do bodyweight training on her upper half.

Mirabai says those five months until the start of 2024 were among the most stressful of her life. “It’s a very big thing for a player to miss five months of training, that too when you don’t know what the future will be. I didn’t know whether my injury would actually get better after five months. But even if it did, in the best-case scenario, I knew that I would be starting from zero when I did restart my training,” she says.

She had to call for backup. “I believe a lot in Hanuman ji. I prayed to him a lot in the last five months,” she says. Mira also befriended the stray dogs that inhabit the campus at NIS Patiala. She’s somewhat of an unofficial caretaker of Whitey, Blackie, Bhoora, and about half-a-dozen other Indie dogs for whom she provides meals and arranges regular shots and vet visits. “They don’t care that I’m an Olympic medallist, or that I did badly at the Asian Games, or that I’m dealing with an injury. They are just happy to see me all the time.”

Perhaps the greatest help came from her family. “The best thing that happened to me at that time was that my mother came to be with me in Patiala,” she says. “At that point in time, I was feeling very low, but I also knew I had to stay there and continue my rehabilitation work. So, I asked my mother if she could come and be with me. When your family is close, the mind feels a little relaxed. I felt I really needed her around me. I was so relaxed once she came.”

Mirabai’s mother, Saikhom Tombi Devi, came armed with a bucket of ingredients for Manipuri-style comfort food. “She made sure I ate home-cooked meals all the time. I have been at the national camp for more than a decade, and I have tried to make Manipuri-style food before. But I never got the taste just right. I really missed Manipuri food. There is a dish called erombi, which has fish paste and is really spicy. I’ve tried to cook it myself, but it never tastes the same. But when my mother cooks for me and feeds me, it’s a different feeling. It feels like everything is right in the world,” she says.

Her emotional needs taken care of, her coach took charge of her physical improvements. “The one thing working in our favour was that Mira had already qualified for the Paris Olympics after winning a silver at the 2022 World Championships. That meant we only had one mandatory competition to take part in (2024 World Cup). We could just focus on her recovery until then,” he says.

Heartbreaking: Mirabai’s Asian Games tragedy was one of the lowest moments of her career.  | Photo Credit: AP

“We knew that we couldn’t train her lower body with weights. And you can’t simulate Olympic-level weight training with bodyweight exercises. There’s no substitute for the rod and weights. But we could use the time we had to work on strengthening all the small muscles — like the rotator cuffs in the shoulder — that we otherwise couldn’t target. That way, we made the best use of the time that we had. What could have been a disadvantage became an advantage,” he adds.

While Sharma looked at the bright side of things, Mirabai says it was often difficult to come to terms with the fact that she had so much work to do. “It was very hard to just accept that I had to do bodyweight squats. At that time, it seemed my goal was so far away. My plan was to do 120kg in the clean and jerk and 90kg in the snatch [her personal bests are 119kg and 88kg, respectively], and now I can’t even do free squats. I couldn’t even lift my body weight at the start of the rehabilitation period. A lot of negative thoughts come into the mind at that time. But I kept telling myself that whatever has happened, I need to recover smartly. I have to steadily recover,” she says.

So, Mirabai did what she had to do when she resumed weightlifting. That meant the lifetime supply of free pizza that she’d been awarded by Domino’s after winning the Tokyo silver would go unclaimed. “I love pizza, but I had to make sure my body weight didn’t increase at all. Even though my mother was cooking for me, I managed to make sure that I didn’t eat more than I should. I managed to stay inside 51kg at all times. That way, I knew I wasn’t going to have to work to reduce my weight once I started training with the weights at the end of my rehab period,” she says.

While losing six months of training might be a near-fatal career blow, Mirabai managed to recover almost entirely. “I was able to put back the weight on the bar almost right after I finished my rehabilitation period. Right now, I’m feeling as strong as I did before the Tokyo Olympics,” she says. That belief isn’t just wishful thinking. Two months ago, in March this year, Mirabai competed at the IWF Weightlifting World Cup in Thailand. It had been just three months after she lifted a weight for the first time since the Asian Games. She made five successful lifts out of a total of six attempts — lifting a best of 81kg in snatch and 103kg in clean and jerk. Although her total of 184kg was her lowest in over six years of competition and only placed her 11th overall, it was a mark that her coach was more than happy with. “She was starting out with almost nothing. And within three months, we were just about 10 percent off her best lifts,” he says.

Now, though, Mirabai is a lot closer to her personal best. Although he won’t give exact figures for fear of tipping off the rest of the field, Sharma says he is a very confident man. Even in the one relatively light training session that Sportstar visited, Mirabai was making three snatch repetitions of one of the weights she had lifted at the World Cup. “The medal isn’t something that we are too worried about. We will be fighting for a medal in Paris. I don’t know which colour it will be, though,” he says.

Support system: Vijay Sharma believes that Mirabai is a once-in-a-generation weightlifter.  | Photo Credit: SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP

It’s a bold prediction from Sharma, who admits the competition in Paris will be a lot harder than it was last time in Tokyo. “At that time, the biggest hurdle for Mira wasn’t the rest of the field but just her own fear after what had happened in Rio. The Chinese girl was very strong, but no one else was really competing with her. This time around, the Chinese girl (Hou Zhihui) is very strong, but there are also three very strong girls — from the USA (Jourdan Delacruz, personal best 200kg), Romania (Mihaela Cambei PB 200kg), and Thailand (either Surodchana Khambao or Thanyathon Sukhcharoen — both of whom have PBs of 200kg). It will most likely be four weightlifters competing for two medals,” he says.

He has little doubt Mirabai will come through. “Her technique is much better than what it used to be even three years ago, and her strength is about the same. All these other weightlifters also have a personal best of 200kg. They will probably have to lift their personal best once again in Paris. On the other hand, Mirabai can get to 200kg even on an average day,” he says.

What also helps, he says, is her unrelenting motivation. “She is no doubt a once-in-a-generation weightlifter. She has the passion to achieve something. Mira already had an Olympic medal. She didn’t need to struggle so much just to get ready for the Olympics.

“But she is someone who is never satisfied with anything. Even though she has a record of 119kg in clean and jerk, which no one in India has done to date, she is still not satisfied. She has also won a World Championship gold and an Olympic medal, which no other Indian has. Yet she is not satisfied. I think even if she wins another medal at the Olympics, she will still not be satisfied. She will keep pushing herself,” he says.

These are bold predictions, but he says neither he nor Mirabai is under any pressure. “Compared to the Tokyo Olympics, there’s almost no stress this time. All the stress got slapped out of us after what happened at the Asian Games last year. We were so confident in our preparation, and then we were hit with a disaster. This time we are training with complete sincerity and going to leave the rest to God,” he says.