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 a brief while, 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 Karnam Malleswari’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.