Mirabai Chanu plans to compete in World Championship in December

Mirabai Chanu won silver medal at the Olympics in 49 kg.
Mirabai Chanu won silver medal at the Olympics in 49 kg.

After her Olympic success, Indian weightlifter Mirabai Chanu has now set her sights on the World Championships scheduled for December 7 to 17 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She is working on a revised technique for the snatch event, and the Worlds will be a good testing ground for it.

Her coach Vijay Sharma exclusively told Sportskeeda:

“We are definitely planning to compete at the world championships in December. But we still have three months left, so we don’t know how things will pan out.”

The world championships will be the first major competition for Mirabai Chanu since her silver medal in the women’s 49kg weight category at the Tokyo Olympics. She became only the second Indian to win an Olympic medal in weightlifting after Karnam Malleswari (2000).

The 27-year-old is currently training at Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports, Patiala, Punjab. She aims to win a medal at the Asian Games next year and the World Championship will help test her new techniques.


Mirabai Chanu continues to work on ‘Snatch’

The biggest difference between Mirabai Chanu and China’s Hou Zhihui at the Olympics was their snatch event. While the Indian managed to lift 87 kg, her Chinese counter-part lifted an impressive 94 kg to take a big lead.

Rather than snatch, which is more technique-based, the Imphal-born is known for her clean and jerk events, courtesy of her raw strength.


Also Read: Analyzing Mirabai Chanu's the ‘snatch’ conundrum


Sharma believes they have covered some ground in the past few months and will focus primarily on improving Mirabai’s snatch in the build-up to the Olympics.

“We are good in clean and jerk but struggle in snatch. Strength has always been our best friend and so we excel in clean and jerk. But we have improved a lot in snatch too. With time in our hands, we can now focus more on it,” Sharma said.

However, the new technique is still at an experimental stage. Sharma believes the world championships will help them understand their shortcomings.

“We have analyzed a few places we need to work on. It will take some time as all this is still at an experimental stage. The world championships will give us a good picture where Mirabai Chanu stands before Asian Games,” he added.

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Edited by Anantaajith Raghuraman