Indian weightlifting in 2025 continued to revolve around Mirabai Chanu, whose World Championships silver emerged as the sport’s lone global highlight in a season marred by doping scandals and a lack of senior-level progress.
Returning after more than a year out due to injury, the Tokyo Olympics silver medallist resumed competition with a gold medal at the Commonwealth Championships on home soil before adding a silver at the World Championships in the 48kg category. The results reaffirmed her role as India’s standard-bearer, even as she struggled to push beyond her previous benchmarks.
Chanu, sidelined since the Paris Games in 2024, made her comeback at the Commonwealth Championships in Ahmedabad in August, though the field lacked depth. She carried that momentum into the World Championships at Forde in Norway, finishing second with a total lift of 199kg — 84kg in the snatch and 115kg in the clean and jerk.
Despite standing on the podium, the coveted 90kg snatch remained out of reach for the Manipuri lifter, who also fell short of improving her personal best.
“In the context of Mirabai, this year has been good. She came to competition after a long time, and won a silver medal at the World Championships which was uplifting after the failure of Paris Olympics,” chief coach Vijay Sharma maintained.
Chanu now faces a fresh challenge following another reshuffle of Olympic weight categories by the International Weightlifting Federation. The women’s 48kg division has been dropped from the Olympic programme, meaning she will eventually need to move up to the 53kg category, the lowest women’s class at the Los Angeles Games.
For the moment, she is expected to continue competing in the 48kg division with the Asian Games next year in focus — a competition where a medal has so far eluded her.
Also read: Mirabai Chanu set for comeback at Commonwealth C’ships
Beyond Chanu, the senior circuit offered little encouragement. While Indian lifters won medals at the Commonwealth Championships, the opposition was modest and the performances fell short of world-class standards.
At the Asian Championships, Nirupama Devi finished fourth in the women’s 64kg category, while Dilbag Singh placed ninth in the men’s 96kg event, underlining the gap between India and the sport’s elite outside the Commonwealth arena.
Doping remained the sport’s most damaging issue. India was flagged by the World Anti-Doping Agency as the worst offender for the third consecutive year based on 2024 data, with weightlifting contributing the second-highest number of violations.
The seriousness of the problem was evident at the Khelo India University Games earlier this month, where several lifters failed to turn up after entering, resulting in a spike in DNS entries following the arrival of anti-doping officials.
Amid the gloom, the rise of junior and youth lifters provided a measure of optimism as Indian weightlifting looks ahead to the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games next season.
“The second line is developing well. The juniors did very well at the Commonwealth Championships.
“There were youth world records and their totals were very good, equal to what the senior national champions are lifting,” Sharma said.
Koyel Bar set two youth world records at the Commonwealth Championships in August, while Priteesmita Bhoi broke the youth world record in the clean and jerk on her way to gold in the girls’ 44kg category at the Youth Asian Games later in the year.
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