CWG 2022: Indian weightlifters dominate as facilities for athletes improve

As Indian weightlifters dominate at the Commonwealth Games, the sport fraternity credits the govt and federation with improved facilities for athletes

According to the 2011 Census, Saidbhar, a small village in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, has a population of about 5,000 people. None bar two, by Shyam Yadav’s reckoning, had heard of weightlifting till five years ago. “My daughters (Preeti and Shivani) were the first two girls to start weightlifting in the village,” he says. “When they did, there was no interest, no knowledge and no facilities for weightlifting here. We built everything from scratch.”

The small gymnasium — called the Vediram Memorial Sports Society — where the two girls started training, houses over 40 weightlifters today. All of them are below the age of 15. Yadav, the secretary of the board that runs the academy and the society, says this is by design. “When we decided to start the academy in Baghpat, bhai saab (Sahdev Yadav, president of the Indian Weightlifting Federation) insisted that we focus on the grassroots. The bigger centres catered to talented lifters selected for the national camp. It was important to teach the sport to younger kids.” While Preeti and Shivani, now part of the camp at the National Institute of Sports, Patiala, were not in Baghpat to watch the deluge of weightlifting medals for India at the Commonwealth Games, Yadav had asked that a TV be set up to allow the academy’s lifters to watch. “Protsahan milega (they will get encouraged),” he says.

Vijay Sharma, India’s national weightlifting coach (and the man behind Mirabai Chanu’s success in the past few years), reiterates the contribution of these smaller rural centres towards this burgeoning medal tally, albeit in a different way. “Medal jeetne me bahut struggle hai,” he says. “Yeh paisewalon ka kaam nahi. Jo zaroorat se majboor ho, wahi yeh sport karega.” (It takes a great struggle to win medals. It’s not for the rich; those who are in need take up this sport.)

Sharma’s sociological observations about his sport are borne out of intense personal experience and years of suffering and scrutiny. A late entrant into the sport, he has held the national title and represented India at international events, albeit without much success. “It was a different time,” he says. “We didn’t have the facilities that exist today. There was no AC in the training halls. Zero science. And we might as well not talk about diet…”

Karnam Malleswari, the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal (in weightlifting, Sydney 2000) and recently announced as the first vice chancellor of the upcoming Delhi Sports University, concurs. “There is no doubt about the work put in to improve facilities, coaching staff, and nutritionists for the athletes. Credit has to be given to the government, SAI (Sports Authority of India), the federation. The overall environment has become much more conducive towards winning. It’s a pleasant change.”

The results are there for all to see. At the time of writing, on the penultimate day of competition, India had eight medals from the event (3 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze) — the most of any country at the Commonwealth Games 2022. Mirabai Chanu, Jeremy Lalrinnunga and Achinta Sheuli had registered Games records en route to gold. From the fringe of the Indian consciousness, weightlifting had gone mainstream.

DEMONS, INSIDE & OUTSIDE

Before leaving for Birmingham, Sharma had confidently predicted that India would surpass their nine-medal tally from the sport in Gold Coast. While doing so, he also acknowledged that competition at the Commonwealth Games wasn’t the toughest.

“Our focus is on putting together a strong team for the Paris Olympics,” he’d said. “The qualification cycle will start with the World Championships in December, and from there we will have competitions every three months. It’s a young team, and the rankings at the end of the qualifiers (every weightlifter is ranked based on performances in six qualifying events) will help us analyse where we, and they, stand.”

India’s weightlifting team also has a team of psychologists — another of Sharma’s interventions — to help young athletes negotiate the tricky world of elite sport. A lot of weightlifting, Sharma, Malleswari and even the renowned age-old coach Pal Singh Sandhu say, has to do with mental strength.

“If you fail to lift a certain weight, then suddenly that waiting corridor starts looking very narrow,” Sandhu says. “You have just two minutes to recalibrate, throw away the fear, and go and try to lift it again.” “It takes a lot of guts to go and face the bar again,” Malleswari says. The weight inside is often heavier than that on the barbell.

For evidence, look no further than the women’s 71 kg competition on Monday. Nigeria’s Joy Ogbonne Eze, the U20 World record holder in all three categories (snatch, clean and jerk and total) was among the favourites for gold. After the snatch, she sat second in the leaderboard, seemingly guaranteed a medal. In the clean and jerk, Ogbonne attempted to lift 125 kg, five below her personal best set last year. In her first lift, a small miscalculation ended up with her knees on the floor. It was a horrible error at the pressure end of the event. She never recovered and failed to register a lift at all. Her failure meant India’s Harjinder Kaur ended up with an unexpected bronze.

Even while Sharma prepares his wards for the mental side of the sport, at the macro level, reforms are incoming. Weightlifting has a chequered doping history unlike any other sport. An audit of the world body led to revelations of large-scale corruption and cover-ups, which even threatened this ancient sport’s participation in the Olympics to come. The federation itself, having been forced to confront multiple doping violations by Indian lifters in years past, has been attempting a major clean-up. Heavy sanctions, fines and clean sport at the grassroots are the agenda.

Despite all this, the International Olympic Committee has cut the Olympic competition down to 10 weight categories (Tokyo had 14) and even revamped the categories. Of the eight categories India has medals in from the Commonwealth Games (till now), only three will be in Paris.

All of this, the negative publicity, the indeterminate schedule and the world body’s inefficiency have been detrimental to the grassroots, and of course the athletes, the most. The sports ministry’s funding is the backbone of Indian weightlifting. While Mirabai Chanu has sponsorship from JSW and the Olympic Gold Quest (in addition to being in the SAI Target Olympic Podium Scheme) most of the other lifters struggle for the crumbs. “It’s not a glamorous sport,” Yadav says. “When my daughters started it, everyone in the village said ‘what is this and why not get them to play hockey or cricket?’” The sport’s isolationist niche and technical style isn’t exactly the kind of television Indian audiences like either.

Yadav believes that is changing. “Now there’s interest. Hopefully the money will follow.”