Mirabai Chanu

Saikhom Mirabai Chanu was born on 8 August 1994 in Nongpok Kakching, in Manipur’s Imphal East district, into a Meitei farming household. Relatives noticed her strength early — firewood loads that older siblings struggled with. She found the barbell at the Khuman Lampak complex in Imphal, first under local coach L. Anita Chanu, then for the long haul with Vijay Sharma, who became both her personal coach and a national-team voice. The Manipur police service later gave her a career off the platform; the lifts kept defining the public one.

International notice arrived in Scotland. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow she took silver in the 48 kg class. Rio 2016 went wrong — no valid lift, a public wound she has never treated lightly. Anaheim 2017 repaired the reputation: Worlds gold at 48 kg with 194 kg, the first Indian weightlifting world title in more than twenty years. Gold Coast 2018 and Birmingham 2022 added Commonwealth golds and Games records. In Tashkent in April 2021 she clean-and-jerked 119 kg for a 49 kg world record. Tokyo that summer brought India’s first medal of those Games — Olympic silver at 202 kg behind China’s Hou Zhihui.

Paris 2024 was the near miss that still stings: 199 kg for fourth, one kilogram behind Thailand’s Surodchana Khambao. Hangzhou’s Asian Games had already finished fourth. The IWF’s category reshuffle pushed her back toward 48 kg for Glasgow 2026, where she completed a Commonwealth hat-trick — 190 kg total, a 22 kg margin, and a deliberate decision not to grind a final attempt with Aichi-Nagoya weeks away. Worlds silver in Forde in 2025 showed the podium reflex is intact even when Olympic colour is not.

An Asian Games medal is still the gap. Sharma has called it unfinished business; Japan hosts from 19 September to 4 October 2026, and Chanu has talked about switching weight classes again for that window. Commonwealth dominance is settled. Olympic redemption after Paris is the longer question. For anyone following Indian sport, she is already the standard: Manipur pathway, a lasting coach partnership, and a platform that can open a Games for the whole country. The next chapter is whether Nagoya finally hangs a colour that Tokyo and Glasgow already understand.