MIRABAI Chanu Saikhom

General
RIO EXPERIENCE
She began working with a psychologist after competing at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where she failed to record a lift in any of her three attempts in the clean and jerk. "I kept thinking why I failed despite working so hard and was questioning myself. But after talking to a psychologist I understood that it was my first Olympics and the pressure got to me. Slowly, I was able to focus on training again. I learned a lot by participating in the Rio Olympics. In fact, I have learned everything from Rio - from my weaknesses to how to rectify them, how to improve myself in terms of training and performance in competition. It is important for players, sometimes we feel dull, if there's an injury during training or maybe because we have had a bad performance. At such a time talking to psychologists is helpful because they explain that tomorrow is a new day and to try again." (timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 17 May 2021; scroll.in, 04 May 2021)

EARLY DAYS
She first tried weightlifting in 2008 at the Khuman Lampak Sports Complex in Imphal, India, although she had originally gone there in the hope of taking up archery. However, she met weightlifting coach Anita Chanu and was persuaded to try the sport. "Initially I had thought of taking up archery. But then, when I was in class eight, we had a piece on [Indian weightlifter] Kunjarani Devi as our text. That story, you can say, changed my life. I desperately wanted to be a weightlifter. When I was growing up, I did stuff like wood cutting, at nearby hills, bringing them up by myself and then fetching water from nearby ponds, in milk powder cans. [Anita Chanu] told me to bring bamboo trunks, to be used as barbells, for technique training. In weightlifting, you have to start with technique training, building body strength comes later. I had to find some nice bamboo trees near my house and cut them to be used as a kind of a barbell. This continued for around a month. Once the technical training was done, I shifted to normal training." (telegraphindia.com, 13 Oct 2020; olympics.com, 15 Sep 2019; yourstory.com, 29 Aug 2019; iwf.net, 23 Apr 2018)

OCCUPATION
She works as a ticket controller for Northeast Frontier Railway, a unit of the Railway Sports Promotion Board in India. (Northeast Frontier Railway Facebook page, 01 May 2021; sportstar.thehindu.com, 22 Feb 2019)