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Mirabai Chanu has once again brought laurels to India after clinching a Gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

The Manipuri lifter won the women's 48kg gold with a total lift of 190kg, setting a Commonwealth record of 85kg in the snatch before sealing the title with a Games-record 105kg clean and jerk.

It was her third consecutive Commonwealth Games gold, following her triumphs in 2018 and 2022, and it was India's first gold medal of the Games.
Chanu radiated a quiet confidence after the win, and it comes from an athlete who has built a successful career laced with several ups and downs.

But before all of that calm, record-breaking consistency lies a story that began far from any stadium, in a small Manipuri village, with a girl carrying firewood on her head because her family could not afford anything else.

Her story of how a tea-seller's daughter from Nongpok Kakching became one of the greatest weightlifters.


Mirabai discovered her talent in the woods
Mirabai Chanu was born on August 8, 1994, in Nongpok Kakching, a village about 20km from Imphal, Manipur. Being the youngest of six siblings, she grew up in a humble family, where her father worked as a construction labourer with the state's Public Works Department. At the same time, her mother ran a small tea shop to support the family, according to the Olympics official website. Money was tight, so young Mirabai and her siblings often walked into nearby forests to collect firewood, saving on fuel costs at home.



It was on one such trip, at age 12, that her hidden strength came to notice. Accompanying her older brother Saikhom Sanatomba, then 16, she helped gather a large pile of wood. When it came time to carry it home, Sanatomba struggled with the load, but Mirabai lifted the bundle onto her head with ease and walked two kilometres over hilly terrain without breaking stride. Her brother was instantly convinced she had a gift for weightlifting .



Mirabai was inclined towards archery first; weightlifting almost happened by accident

Chanu herself, however, had her heart set on a different sport altogether. "All my brothers and cousins play football, but they would come back home dirty after a day's play. I wanted to play a sport which is neat and clean. At first, I wanted to be an archer as they are neat and clean and stylish", she said according to the Olympics.com. With that in mind, she headed to the Sports Authority of India centre in Imphal to try archery. There was no archery session that day, but she happened to watch a group of weightlifters training, and something about their intensity pulled her in.


The road to success was full of hardships
Inspired further by another Manipuri lifter, Kunjarani Devi, Chanu committed to the sport despite having no facilities in her own village. She travelled nearly 40km every day to train under coach Anita Chanu, often riding buses or hitchhiking on trucks to get there. In the absence of proper equipment, she practised her technique using bamboo trunks instead of barbells for the first six months, before finally switching to conventional weights.


She saw a heartbreaking low before the success

That grit carried her through junior titles and, eventually, a Commonwealth Games silver at Glasgow 2014. But later, her Rio 2016 Olympics campaign ended without a single successful clean-and-jerk lift. She later admitted, "After I failed in the Rio Olympics, I was completely broken. I had aspirations of winning a medal, but I was not able to do so. So, I kept thinking 'after working so hard why did I fail'."

That heartbreak became fuel, and within a year, she was a world champion, and by Tokyo 2020, an Olympic silver medallist, saying afterward, "I have been dreaming of this moment for the past five years. I tried hard to win the gold but sadly couldn't. But I am happy to win a medal for my country."


Beginning from a firewood bundle on a forest trail to fetch contents for a humble home to a Commonwealth record in Glasgow, Chanu's journey is one of grit and relentless hard work outpacing all odds.