India’s Saikhom Mirabai Chanu Finishes Eleventh in Weightlifting
India’s Saikhom Mirabai Chanu finished eleventh in the women’s 48kg weightlifting event at Rio Olympics on Saturday.
India’s Saikhom Mirabai Chanu put up a highly disappointing performance at the Rio Olympics as she could not get an overall total in women’s 48kg after failing to lift the weight in any of her three attempts in clean & jerk section.
In a field of 12 lifters, she was one of two lifters who did not finish (DNF) her event.
Mirabai failed to lift 104kg in her first attempt in clean and jerk, followed by two more attempts to pick up 106kg. In both her second and third attempt, the Indian simply couldn’t lift the weight. Interestingly her personal best at clean and jerk is 107 kg.
In fact out of six chances – three in snatch and three in clean and jerk – Mirabai could pick the weight up just once.
In snatch, Mirabai got only her second attempt correct out of the three chances. After failing to lift 82kg in her first attempt, she managed to somehow hold on to the weight in her second chance.
However, she could not pick up 84kg in her third attempt, thereby finishing sixth in snatch out of 12 competitors in the field.
The 21-year-old lifter could not even match the performance she had given during the selection trials at Patiala in June, where she had bettered her own record by 1kg in snatch, picking up 85kg and equalled the record of N Kunjarani Devi (107kg) in clean and jerk.
In the process, Mirabai had broken Kunjarani’s total record of 190kg with a combined lift of 192kg.
Thailand’s Tanasan Sopita finished with a gold with an overall lift of 200kg (92+108), while Agustiani Sri Wahyuni of Indonesia claimed the silver and Japan’s Miyake Hiromi took the bronze.
(With inputs from PTI)
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