Mirabai Chanu aims to conquer the Asian Games, the one title that eludes her, despite past successes and fierce competition from China and North Korea.

Updated on: Sep 17, 2026, 17:40:29 IST

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New Delhi: Coach Vijay Sharma calls it the final frontier. Mirabai Chanu gives a resigned, wistful smile at its mention. No international competition, not even the Olympics and the World Championships, has teased and taunted India’s best weightlifter as much. Only six Indian women have set foot on the podium for a total of nine medals (4 silver, 5 bronze). There’s a reason Chanu refers to the Asian Games as her Holy Grail.

“I have won everything in my career but this is one medal that has eluded me. I’d like to correct that anomaly this time,” Chanu told . It’s a statement one has listened to for years; a periodic ache that resurfaces every four years. After a ninth place on her Asiad debut in 2014, Chanu missed the 2018 edition due to a lower back injury — she calls it her worst injury — that sidelined her for nine months.

Mirabai entered the Covid-delayed 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou on the back of silver medals at the Tokyo Olympics (2021) and World Championships (2022) but injured her right hip on the platform to finish fourth.

North Korea’s Ri Song-gum broke the world record in clean and jerk (124kg) and overall lift (216kg) while China’s Jiang Huihua smashed the Games record in snatch with a 94kg effort. Chanu had only two legitimate lifts — one each in snatch (83kg) and clean and jerk (108kg) — for a below par tally of 191kg.

“The spirit was dented but not dead. We knew we’ll be back,” Sharma recalled. He would know, for after Chanu’s spectacular implosion at the 2016 Rio Olympics where she couldn’t produce a single legal clean and jerk effort, knives were out for him. “We just put our heads down and worked harder than ever,” he said.

Chanu redeemed herself five years later at the Tokyo Olympics, becoming only the second Indian weightlifter, after Karnam Malleswari’s bronze at Sydney 2000, to win an Olympic medal. Redemption followed after Hangzhou too when she won a World Championships silver in 2025.

There’s also a third consecutive gold at the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Glasgow this July, but neither the coach nor the athlete are in the mood to gloat over what was pretty much pre-ordained considering the lack of competition in her weight class (48kg).

Chanu cruised to the top at CWG with an aggregate lift of 190kg — she snatched 85kg and lifted 105kg in clean and jerk. All three ended up being a Games record, but she knows she’ll have to do much more at the Fukiage Hall in Nagoya.

“A win always boosts your confidence but I am not missing the bigger picture. The competition at the Asian Games is as tough, if not tougher, than the Olympics. That’s why it is so important for me to do well there, because deep down I know I am good enough to excel at that level. Being wheeled out of the venue (Hangzhou 2023) is not a happy memory but I will use it as a fuel to motivate me,” she said.

Coach Sharma is equally unsparing. “A CWG gold is fine but there’s always room for improvement. There were a few boxes we wanted to tick at CWG from a technical standpoint, and we did tick most of them. It wasn’t a flawless win though, which means we have work to do,” he said, referring to the fact that Chanu failed her opening lifts in clean and jerk and snatch.

“We can’t afford any slip-ups at the Asian Games. The level there is just too high,” Sharma said. That’s no exaggeration. Since the introduction of women’s weightlifting in Asian Games in Beijing 1990, China has won six of the nine gold medals on offer in the lightest weight class (48-49kg). The last two editions have been won by North Korea’s Ri Song-gum.

Chanu is yet to win a competition featuring top-level Chinese and North Korean opposition. Her 2017 World Championships gold came with an asterisk — neither China nor North Korea participated. While China was serving a doping suspension by the international body, North Korea boycotted the Worlds owing to tensions with the USA.

The Tokyo Olympics, where Chanu took silver (202kg), was won by China’s Hou Zhihui, who had an 8kg advantage. In every meeting where China fielded an established contender in her weight category, Chanu has lost to at least one Chinese — the notable exception being the 2022 Worlds, where she beat Hou Zhihui (bronze) while still losing to Jiang Huihua (gold). In 2025, she beat both Chinese entrants, Li Shumiao and Zhu Qiulian, although neither had the credentials of Zhihui or Jiang.

The competition with North Korea is as lop-sided. Reigning world and Asian Games champion Ri Song-gum has been Chanu’s bugbear. The two have squared off at the 2019 Asian Championships, 2019 World Championships, 2023 Asian Games and the 2025 World Championships, and the North Korean holds a 4-0 head-to-head record against the Indian.

Chanu was within striking distance with Ri in 2019 — losing the Asian Championships by 1kg and Worlds by 3kg — but following North Korea’s return in 2023, Ri seems to have unlocked her beast mode. She beat an injured Chanu by 25kg in Hangzhou and aggregated 14kg more than the Indian at the 2025 Worlds to become champion.

China and North Korea together have pocketed 25 of the 35 gold medals across all classes in the last five Asian Games in women’s weightlifting.

In Chanu’s lightest division, the duopoly is even greater— eight of the nine titles since women’s weightlifting debuted at the Asian Games in 1990. Six of those nine gold medals have been won by China with North Korea winning the last two iterations. The only exception was in 2014 when Kazakhstan’s Margarita Yelisseyeva won the title. Domination would be too prosaic to define this grip. It’s intimidation.

“I don’t think there’s a technical or mental issue. It’s just that the Chinese and North Koreans are too powerful. That’s why our main goal is to stay injury-free. If my body is fully fit, I trust my training to take it to the podium,” Chanu said.

There’s also a small matter of nailing a 90kg snatch and finding a way to total beyond 200kg more consistently. Chanu’s clean and jerk remains world-class, but her major rivals have historically held advantage in the snatch.

She has crossed 200kg seven times in her career, first doing so in 2019 with a best of 205kg. Chanu’s last 200kg-plus total came at the nationals earlier this year. Ri Song-gum has done it nine times, with a best of 221kg. Jiang Huihua has crossed the mark 10 times, with a best of 216kg, while Hou Zhihui has recorded at least 18 such totals in documented senior and junior national and international events, with a best of 217kg.

Chanu’s career-best total is currently 11kg below Jiang, 12kg below Hou, and 16kg below Ri.

At 32 and in the autumn of her career, Chanu faces her toughest test yet. The numbers suggest that the proverbial Chinese wall is higher than ever and the challenge from North Korea isn’t going away anytime soon.

“Whatever happens eventually will be my destiny. All I can do is try, which I will,” she said, her beaming smile intact.

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