Mirabai Chanu was the sole Indian weightlifter, who qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. And she became the only Indian weightlifter to bring home a historic Olympic silver medal in the women’s 49kg category in the 2020 Summer Games on Saturday.

One of India’s brightest medal prospects, the weightlifter from Manipur made amends for the poor show at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

At the Rio edition, she had failed to record a legal lift in any of her three attempts in clean and jerk. Due to this, she could not get an overall total in women’s 48kg.

But that performance did not bog her down. It only added fuel to the fire and propelled the Indian to give her very best.

She silenced her critics by taking home the gold in the 2017 world championships. She followed it up with another gold in the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Not only did she win titles but also overcame an unspecified back problem that caused her problems in 2018. She then changed her category to 49kg after the international federation decided to introduce new categories in the sport.

Interestingly, clean and jerk, which was her enemy in the Rio edition of the Games, has now become her go-to category. Owing to consistent performance, she always assures to stay in contention for medals at top events.

To bring matters into perspective and to show how she conquered clean and jerk, Mirabai is currently the world record holder in the women’s 49kg in the same category. She successfully lifted 119kg in the Asian Championship in April to win the yellow metal in the section and an overall bronze.

This was her last tournament ahead of the Tokyo Games.

While her dominant display in clean and jerk helped her stay at par with her opponents, her display in the snatch category proved to be her kryptonite.

The 26-year-old has, self-admittedly, struggled while lifting weights in the snatch due to her shoulder injury.

In the recently-concluded Asian Championships, Mirabai failed to successfully lift 85kg in her first two snatch attempts. But she overturned the threat of getting eliminated from the tournament by heaving 86kg in her final attempt.

However, it was 10kg less than Chinese lifter Hou Zhihui’s world record lift of 96kg at the same competition. She went on to win the gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Her best in snatch is 88kg that had come in the national championship in February last year.

“I am very happy, I have been dreaming of this for the past five years. I am very proud of myself right now. I did try for gold but even silver is a great achievement for me,” Chanu said after her silver medal performance at the Summer Games.

To date, she has won a coveted world championship gold medal, two Commonwealth Games medals — silver in 2014 and gold in 2018 — and an Asian Championship bronze.