There will be a billion aspirations attached with Mirabai Chanu when she steps on the arena at the Tokyo International Forum to compete in the 49kg division on July 24.
As the sole Indian challenge in the event, Mirabai has a lot riding on her shoulders. Apart from lifting weights beyond her body weight, Mirabai is carrying the expectation of being a genuine medal contender.
Five years since she crashed out of the competition at Rio, Mirabai has matured a lot since then. Now, richer in experience and toughened up mentally, if Mirabai comes good at the biggest stage in Tokyo, she can go beyond Karnam Malleswari’s bronze medal at Sydney in 2000.
For Mirabai to finish on the podium, nailing the snatch event is the key.
Hou Zhihui from China, a favourite for gold and Mirabai’s principal opponent in Tokyo, lifted 96kg in snatch and 117kg in clean and jerk for gold at the Asian Championship in Tashkent this April. At the 2019 Asian Championships in Pattaya, where she won the gold, Zhihui lifted 92kg in the snatch and 116kg in clean and jerk. Zhihui has never lifted below 200kg in her career.
Mirabai has mostly lagged in snatch. At Tashkent, where she won bronze, Mirabai’s snatch was 86kg, 10 behind Zhihui. Her clean and jerk lift, a world record lift of 119kg, reduced the gap from ten to eight. At Pattaya, her snatch of 86kg was six less than Zhihui’s snatch and three less in clean and jerk of 113kg.
At Tashkent, where Mirabai was almost on the verge of crashing out of the competition after failing to do the first two lifts, she eventually lifted 86kg on the last attempt. That placed her fourth on the list, behind Zhihui’s 96kg, Jiang Huihua’s 89 kg and Windy Cantika Aisah’s 87kg. In clean and jerk, Mirabai sat at the top with 119kg, one ahead of Huihua, two ahead of Zhihui and 17 ahead of Aisah.
Amongst the competitors going to Tokyo and comparing their best lifts of 2021, Mirabai stands at fourth in snatch. Her personal best in the snatch is 88kg.
The weight lifted by Mirabai in clean and jerk has seen a steady increase. The snatch lifts have been her Achilles heel. There is also an understanding that when Mirabai misses her opening snatch, it puts pressure on her remaining chances. In a pressure-cooker situation like the Olympics, this could prove to be a critical factor between a podium finish and being out of it.
Apart from nailing snatch, Mirabai has to keep herself fit. A lower-back injury, which kept her out for a major part of 2018, resurfaced after the lockdown caused by the pandemic in March 2020. As she returned to training after restrictions were partially lifted, Mirabai could not lift even 50kg.
She made a trip to St. Louis to see Dr Aaron Horschig, a former national-level weightlifter turned-physiotherapist. He treated her issues related to stability and weakness in her right shoulder apart from the left hip shift while doing heavy squats.
A Eureka moment solved the asymmetry problem while doing the turnover in snatch. Horschig realised the movement of the right shoulder going out of sync with the left shoulder. The right shoulder retracted and rotated downward even before the upward rotation would begin. For this, a corrective exercise to activate rhomboid muscles (connecting the shoulder blades to the rib cage and spine) was done.
Referring to it, Mirabai said in April, “We are planning for it. My shoulder gets tight sometimes, and that hinders my snatch. Because of the shoulder issue, I have doubts sometimes. For this, exercises are happening and focus is on technique.”
Mirabai can look to go upward in Tokyo. Anything can happen on the big day. To get on the podium, Mirabai’s mission would be to get fit and lift the first snatch right.