Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu wins silver medal in women's 49kg category
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Mirabai Chanu on Saturday won a silver medal in the women's 49 kg weightlifting competition to open India's counter at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The Manipur athlete lifted a total weight of 202 kg to win the medal. The gold in the event was won by China's HouZhihui, who picked a combined weight total of 210 kg.
Chanu picked a total of 87 kg in the snatch part of the event and ended with a lift of 115 kg in clean and jerk. She is the second Indian weightlifter after KarnamMalleswari to win an Olympic medal.
Chanu has been a world champion in the past, when she won the gold medal in the 48 kg category in Anaheim. She is the reigning Commonwealth Games gold medallist in the 48kg category.
A confident smile never leaving her face, Mirabai Chanu ended India's over two-decade long wait for a weightlifting medal at the Olympics, clinching the 49kg category silver medal five years after leaving the same platform in tears following a disastrous debut. With her historic triumph, she ensured that India was second on the medals tally for now, a feat that has never been achieved before by the country. The diminutive iron lady from Manipur lifted a total of 202kg (87kg 115kg) to better KarnamMalleswari's bronze in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. With this, she exorcised the ghosts of the 2016 Games where she had failed to log a single legitimate lift, leaving her shattered. Her smile shone the brightest during the entire performance on Saturday but also hard to miss were the Olympic rings' shaped earrings that she was sporting, which were a gift from her mother.
The gold went to China's HouZhihui with an effort of 210kg (94kg 116kg), who created Olympic records in all three categories (snatch, clean and jerk and Total).
