Sports Desk, 6 May: Olympic silver medalist Mirabai Chanu came in sixth place in the 49kg weight category at the Asian Weightlifting Championships. Chanu who has a snatch and clean and jerk personal best of 88 kg and 119 kg, lifted 85 kg in the snatch and 109 kg in the clean and jerk for a total lift of 194 kg.
She started with an 85 kg snatch lift and tried 88 kg on her second and third attempts but she was unsuccessful. She placed sixth in the snatch category. The Indian woman in clean and jerk elected to skip the next two attempts in order to avoid damage after grabbing 109 kg on her first try.
Chanu has won one medal at the Asian Championships, a bronze in 2020 with a total lift of 205 kg including a 119 kg world record clean and jerk. The Commonwealth Games winner competed for the first time at the Asian meet since the world championship in December of last year, where she finished in second place and started a five-month rehabilitation period.
The second in a series of competitions that will qualify athletes for the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 is the Asian Championships in 2023.
Chanu’s combined lift of 194kg raised her Olympic Qualification Ranking (OQR) mark to 400. She is in second place with Jiang Huihua leading with 413 points in the OQR standings. At the conclusion of the qualification session for the Paris Olympics on April 28, 2024, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) will announce a list of ten qualifying athletes in each Olympic weight category (with a maximum of one athlete per nation).