Saikhom Mirabai Chanu

The Comeback Golden Girl

- Liam Dias

Imagine this — as a sportsperson, you work hard your whole life in order to compete on the world’s biggest stage. Your hard work pays off and you qualify for the biggest stage of them all — the Olympics.

Then at the pinnacle of your lifetime goal, you suddenly falter, and mind you, the entire world is watching as you do so. You’ve failed so miserably that all you can do is run for cover, run away from the very stage you dreamed of being on. Failure may be a stepping stone to success, but humiliation and heartbreak is definitely a hard pill to swallow. How you bounce back is indeed what differentiates the good from the great.

Meet Saikhom Mirabai Chanu, India’s Golden Girl. She won gold at the World Weightlifting Championships in USA last November, becoming only the second Indian weightlifter to win gold at the World Championships after Karnam Malleswari did the same 22 years ago in China. Chanu lifted 85 kg in snatch and 109 kg in clean and jerk to total an impressive 194 kg in the 48 kg category and in the process set a new national record in clean-and-jerk. Her own previous record was 108 kg in June last year.