Last weekend proved to be one of the most memorable for Indian sports in a long while. On Saturday, 18-year-old Anahat Singh won the World Junior Championships in squash—a first by an Indian. A day later, 31-year-old Mirabai Chanu completed a hat-trick of gold at the Commonwealth Games. There were other medals bagged in between, too. The weekend also produced a moment that will linger in our minds for long—the image of Mirabai standing on the podium with tears rolling down her cheeks as the national anthem was played.
Though she explained that those were tears of joy, for aficionados who have followed her career, the reaction seemed cathartic. It had been a torrid time for her after she won silver at the Tokyo Olympics and at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games a year later. She picked up a thigh injury and finished fourth at the 2022 Asian Games (held in 2023)—one mega event in which she is yet to make it to the podium. Then she missed competitions for almost a year and endured heartbreak at the Paris Olympics, where she missed a medal by a kilogram to finish fourth. Then, a string of doping cases unearthed among Indian weightlifters weeks before the Glasgow Games tarnished the sport’s image.
Under the circumstances, Mirabai’s medal is worth more than its weight in gold. It will instil belief in one of the country’s most decorated lifters before the Asian Games, where some top lifters will compete. The Manipuri knows she would need to perform at her best to get a medal in Japan this September-October. Among the men’s contingent in Glasgow, para powerlifter Jhandu Kumar, once a vegetable seller, showed the boundlessness of dreams by winning a bronze.
If Mirabai’s feat was cathartic, Anahat’s was among the brightest signals for the country’s sporting future. The Delhi girl started as a young prodigy and won quite a few international titles before laying her hands on the junior world title in a sport that’s on the Los Angeles Olympics roster. She has already won two bronze in mixed and team competitions at the Hangzhou Asian Games. On such a blazing form, she would be expected to win an individual medal at Nagoya, too. More than anything else, performances like these have the power to inspire the country’s youth towards a brighter tomorrow.
