Not just periods, Mirabai Chanu reveals what went wrong at Paris 2024 Olympics

The heartbreak of missing a second Olympic medal continues to haunt Team Mirabai Chanu. A silver medallist at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games, Mirabai finished fourth in the 49kg at the Paris 2024 Olympics weightlifting competition on August 7, 2024. She was edged out by a Thai opponent Surodchana Khambao by the barest of margins.

Almost a year after that setback, Mirabai told Olympics.com that her failure in the first lift of the clean and jerk section was a damper. Mirabai’s coach of more than a decade, Vijay Sharma, said “losing the medal by a kilogram still hurts and will never be erased.”

After the shooters had given India a never-seen-before dream start with a troika of bronze at Chateauroux, weightlifting promised a sure-shot medal. The question was what the colour would be!

There was a lot of expectation around Mirabai because she was physically fit, trained hard at the national camp in Patiala and before entering the Games Village in Paris, had acclimatised well at La Ferte-Milon in France with her two main trainers – coach Sharma and physio Dr Aaron Horschig, the man behind Mirabai’s splendid recovery from a debilitating hip injury sustained at the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2022.

Almost everyone in the Indian media contingent covering the Summer Games turned up at the South Paris Arena on the evening of August 7. There was a sizeable Indian audience and Mirabai, doing a traditional ‘Namaste’, received a thunderous ovation when the line-up was introduced.

Even if she targeted 90kgs in snatch, Mirabai equalled her personal best of 88kgs in her second and final attempt. Just like a false start in athletics, no balls in cricket, bad lifts are part of weightlifting. Remember defending champion Neeraj Chopra had a series of foul throws before winning the Paris Olympics silver in javelin.

Bad lifts can be a result of awry technique, incorrect form, excessive weight or simply because of a lack of warm-up. It was hard to imagine that an experienced weightlifter like Mirabai would not have prepared her body before her lifts in Paris. At the end of the snatch round, Mirabai and Surodchana were joint third, both having lifted 88kgs each.

The clean and jerk section would be decisive. Mirabai failed in her first attempt at 111kgs. She was successful in her second attempt immediately after but Surodchana put the pressure back on Mirabai by lifting 112kgs in her second attempt.

“That bad lift disturbed my rhythm. I was having painful cramps due to my periods and that failed attempt not only dazed me but probably affected my preparation. For me, lifting 111 was not a challenge but the unsuccessful lift probably made the difference in our planning,” said Mirabai on the sidelines of the launch of the ASMITA women’s weightlifting league in Modinagar on Tuesday.

Surodchana lifted 112kgs in clean and jerk for a total of 200kgs. Mirabai (total 199kgs) could not improve beyond 111 – she missed her final attempt at 114kgs -- and was relegated to the fourth position. There have been questions on her team’s selection of weights in the clean and jerk category but Mirabai reiterated that it was “just bad luck and the decision on weight selection was unanimous between her and the coach.”

“Me and my coach knew that even if we did 112 and 113, a medal was guaranteed. We came to Paris regularly doing up to 115 and 117, but kismat (luck) was not with us that evening,” said Mirabai.

While Mirabai put it down to a medal-denying bad lift, coach Sharma was more emotional about missing out on a podium finish. Uttering the lyrics of a famous Jagjit Singh ghazal -- Jo beet gya hai, woh gujar kyo nahi jata (Why doesn’t what has passed, just pass away?” – Sharma said: “It’s not easy to forget this. We had really prepared hard and wanted to make history again and set a benchmark. It was not to be.”

Sharma and Mirabai are working hard at the former’s Weightlifting Warriorz Academy in Modinagar. Going forward, she will be in a new weight category – 48kgs – and both refuse to put the cart before the horse as Mirabai still wants to achieve 90kgs in snatch. She will be 30 on August 8.

“I have been working on slight tweaks in my technique, particularly in snatch. Snatch is all technique while clean and jerk is more power based. How to lift and progress, how to control the back, execution of the second pull, all those aspects need technical refinement. These are little changes but over the years, the body develops muscle memory which is hard to let go,” Mirabai told a group of selected media personnel.

Keeping fit and peaking in the big tournaments will be key to Mirabai’s progress. Her immediate calendar includes the Commonwealth Championships in Ahmedabad from August 24-30. Then her biggest test will come in the IWF World Championships in Forde, Norway from October 2-11.

The goal will then shift to the 2026 Asian Games which will be held in Aichi-Nagoya in Japan from September 19 to October 4. Mirabai’s cupboard doesn’t have an Asian Games gold medal yet. The LA 2028 Olympics are not in Team Mirabai’s mind yet!

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