New high for Mirabai Chanu as she lifts 203 kg to win gold

Former world champ Chanu lifts 203 kg to better national record and win gold in Kolkata; insists preparations are on track for Asian Championships in April

Kolkata: Olympic medal hopeful and former world champion Mirabai Chanu bettered her own national record by lifting a total of 203kg to win the 49kg gold in the National Weightlifting Championships here on Tuesday. The Manipuri, 25, representing Railways here, lifted 88kg in snatch in her second attempt and 115kg in clean and jerk for a total of 203kg. Mirabai's previous best of 201kg had come at the World Championship in Thailand in September last year, where she had finished fourth.

Chanu on the four

Tuesday's effort has put her in fourth place in world rankings behind Chinese Jiang Huihua (212kg) and Hou Zhihui (211kg) and Korean Ri Song Gum (209kg). Mirabai was targeting 207kg but lost her balance in the final attempts of both the snatch and clean and jerk. She started off by easily lifting 85kg in snatch, and raised the weight to 88kg for her second attempt, which was one kg more than the national record and her personal best of 87kg.

Mirabai looked calm as she entered the stage with a big scream and she lifted it at one go. The bar was raised by another 2kg to 90kg but this time, she lost balance and could not complete the attempt. She, however, looked supremely confident in her favourite clean and jerk as she raised the weight from 111kg to 115kg in her first two successful attempts, thereby bettering her previous national record of 114kg. In her final clean and jerk attempt, Mirabai first went for 116kg but after a quick thinking, she opted for 117kg with national coach Vijay Sharma cheering her strongly.

She made a clean lift to the rack position and took a long five-second pause before going for the jerk. She, however, failed in her attempt to settle for a total of 203kg, bettering three national records in the process.

Room for improvement

"I still have some time left for the Asian Championships and I hope to get there [210 kg] before the Olympics," Mirabai told reporters. "Everything is going according to our plan. Every day, we are getting in there. Our target is to achieve 206-207kg at the Asian Championships (Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan in April). It's all about making some technical adjustments now," she added.

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