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Perhaps no medal could have been more fitting for the athlete she has become. If there is one quality that has defined a career that has never been perfect, it is persistence. Rio was supposed to be her Olympic moment. Instead, she failed to register a valid lift. Five years later, in Tokyo, she made amends with an Olympic silver. Hangzhou was supposed to finally give her the Asian Games medal that had eluded her. Instead, she finished fourth, the podium slipping away in another heartbreak. Three years later, she returned to Japan, this time to Nagoya, and won silver.

The 32-year-old, the oldest of the seven lifters in the field, lifted 198 kg – 87 kg in the snatch and 111 kg in the clean and jerk — to finish behind North Korea’s Ri Song-gum. Ri completed an Asian Games golden hat-trick with a world-record 215 kg total, including a 121 kg clean and jerk.

Weight of expectations

Gold was out of reach against a fully fit Ri. But Chanu had another expectation to meet. Every time she steps on to the platform, a medal is expected. She knows it. So does everyone watching from home. And when a country has already convinced itself that its athlete will deliver, that expectation can become its own weight. “There is pressure. Really. There is pressure,” she said. “The whole world has kept hope for me. That Mirabai will get a medal.”

Yet she has also learnt to draw strength from that belief. “On the one hand, I feel strong. There is strength. People think so positively of me. They have prayed so much for me. That thing gives me more confidence.” The other side is less comfortable. “What if something is left by mistake? What will I do? Everyone is thinking that I will get a medal. If I don’t get it, what will I do? There is pressure.”

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For someone who has spent so long carrying expectations, the harder burden has often been getting herself back to the platform after things have gone wrong. The setbacks have not been confined to competition. A career spent pushing her body to its limits has taken a considerable toll. There have been injuries, rehabilitation and long periods of uncertainty. After Paris, where she finished fourth again, missing bronze by just 1kg, it was reasonable to wonder how much more her body could give.

Chanu, however, had not given up on the Asian Games. Alongside Vijay Sharma, her coach and long-time presence through the peaks and troughs of her career, she kept preparing in the basement of a gym in Ghaziabad. The pursuit was no longer about proving she belonged at the top. She had done that long ago. There was simply one medal she did not have. And at 32, she knew there might not be too many more chances to win it.

That stubbornness has made Chanu more than India’s most successful weightlifter of her generation.

Lasting legacy

She has been the constant in a sport that has struggled to find one. Doping offences and suspensions have repeatedly dragged Indian weightlifting into the news, while the talent pipeline has struggled to produce lifters capable of consistently challenging at Asian and world level.

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Chanu has provided the counter-narrative. For much of the last decade, she has kept the sport visible by competing, winning and returning. When Indian weightlifting needed a medal, a headline or simply a reason to believe, Chanu was usually there. In many ways, she has held the sport together at the highest level.

Which makes the question of what comes next unavoidable. There are promising lifters coming through, but nobody currently offers anything close to Chanu’s combination of longevity, consistency and international achievement. Her career has stretched across generations and continued to produce medals at the biggest stages despite injuries and setbacks. There is no obvious replacement for that.

Perhaps Chanu understands that better than most. Her legacy cannot simply be the medals she leaves behind. At Sharma’s academy in Ghaziabad, she is now helping develop the next generation, passing on what she has learnt through years of competing, recovering and returning. “If I can do it, others can too,” she said.