Champion, coach, and destiny: Mirabai Chanu wants Paris again

New Delhi: For an athlete, invincibility and immortality fade with injury. Every little thing hurts, sometimes more than the injury and even failures. There is a small anecdote that a support staff was narrating about the Tokyo 2020 Olympic weightlifting silver medallist Mirabai Chanu.

The Asian Games was a disaster (another Asian Games hampered by injury). When she returned home, she was all alone. No one came to welcome her. There was no brouhaha. She was distraught and hurt. “When I won the Olympic medal, everyone was there, now that I have not won anything, no one is even coming to meet me,” she had lamented. That’s the predicament an athlete lives with. Mirabai too had to learn to live with it.

The Paris Olympics is where she is hoping to redeem herself. Once again plagued by injury in the run-up to the Games, it has not been the best buildup. One last lift. One last hurrah. That’s all she is dreaming of right now.