Saikhom Mirabai Chanu cried after winning gold in Glasgow. Not the wracked tears of Paris 2024, when she left the platform fourth by a single kilogram, on the third day of her period, telling reporters it ‘was not in my destiny.’ These were happy tears, the kind that come only when a career’s worth of grind arrives somewhere at once: an Olympic silver, three Commonwealth titles now, a body coaxed back from injury and recalibrated across weight categories, all of it converging on one podium in the city where she first stood on one, as a teenager with a silver medal in 2014.
Some 7,000 kilometres away in Modinagar, 40 girls had gathered around a screen to watch it happen. When her 105kg clean and jerk locked out, the cheer that went up in the hall was for a coach as much as a champion. Two years ago, a fourth-place finish in Paris could easily have been where Chanu’s story ended. Instead, after recalibrating her body down to the 48kg category, she partnered with national coach Vijay Sharma to build a sanctuary for the sport’s next generation on the outskirts of Ghaziabad.
“Vijay sir and I together started the Weightlifting Warriors Academy in Modinagar,” she told IndiaToday.in.
“We currently have athletes between the ages of 8 and 14, and they are all girls. It was always our dream to train only girls and help them move forward. There are still very few girls who take up weightlifting. After the Tokyo Olympics, more girls started coming. Before that, hardly anyone came.”
40 children train there now, drawn from well beyond her native Manipur.
“Most of them are from the North East. Around 20 are from Assam and about 20 are from Manipur. We also have girls from Jammu, Maharashtra and other states,” she says. “It’s not just athletes from the North East. We have children from across India.”
What she describes next is less coaching than communion.
“I train alongside them and I also coach them. When I see them, it reminds me of my own childhood and how I started. While teaching them, I also get motivated. I remember everything I experienced in weightlifting and whatever I learnt. Getting the opportunity to pass on those experiences makes me very happy.”
“I don’t know how happy the children feel, but I am extremely happy to be able to share my experiences with them. They motivate me as well. Training with them makes me enjoy my own training even more.”
It is worth sitting with that inversion. A three-time Commonwealth champion, an Olympic medallist, says the children motivate her more than the other way round. It is also, perhaps, the only honest answer to why a 31-year-old who has won almost everything still cries on a podium.
THE MENTOR IN GLASGOW
That instinct followed her to Glasgow, where Chanu’s own competition ended long before the weightlifting programme did. She spent the rest of the Games not in recovery but in the wings, watching, cheering, translating.
“Many athletes who come from Manipur face language problems. When I speak to them in Manipuri, they understand me immediately,” she says.
“Whatever I can do, I try to help sir. If I can support an athlete in any way, maybe it can help improve their performance. That makes me happy.”
It is a small, unglamorous kind of leadership, standing beside a lifter who might not medal, in a city where she has already won hers.
“Winning medals is one thing, but to help someone give their best performance on the competition stage is also very important,” she says. “
It feels good to support another athlete. It motivates me too, and I feel it also makes them happy that I am standing beside them. At least, I like to think they feel that way.”
Between the academy and the wings of the SEC Armadillo, a broader purpose has taken shape.
One absence still sits in her cabinet, and she names it before anything else when asked about it.
“I have almost everything now. I have the medals and I’ve achieved a lot. But one thing is still left before me, the Asian Games. Right now, that is my only focus.”
It is the sport’s cruellest irony that the closest she has come to that medal, in 2023, ended with the hip injury that shadowed her all the way to Paris. This time, the math favours her. After the Asian Games, Chanu is expected to move up to the 53kg category, a shift that should ease the punishing cycle of weight-cutting that has defined much of her career, and buy her body some peace on the long road to Los Angeles 2028.
As she returns to the platforms of Modinagar, her motivation is no longer drawn solely from personal ambition. Surrounded by 40 young girls who view her not just as a legend, but as a daily training partner, Mirabai Chanu has found the ultimate recipe for longevity: lifting others as she lifts for gold.
– Ends
