International weightlifting saw a raw grit, high stakes and raw human emotion in the women’s heavyweight battle at the Commonwealth Games. Maibam Martina Devi was among the most talented athletes. When she was 20 years old, she had to work hard to get to the top of the world. Martina was on a rollercoaster that did not let her down and she was in tears when she had to lift 105 kg in the snatch category, and that was just the last moment of hope she had about winning a world championship. But despite her struggle, she managed to secure fifth place with a total of 245 kg, and so she is already one of India’s hottest heavy-weight athletes.
Martina has a strong background in the northeastern state of Manipur, a region that has been producing world-class boxers, weightlifters, and footballers alike in the country for years. Raised with great athletic inspiration from her great mentors like Indian weightlifting pioneer Mirabai Chanu, Martina gravitated towards heavy-category lifting. She was already good at it at home with the physicality and a hardworking spirit which would take her to top women’s weights.
Martina’s path has not been without pain. Like many top athletes, she has had to battle the physical toll of competitive sport and to overcome difficult injuries (such as a major anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury). With proper rehabilitation and support from sports scientists and medical experts, she came back to peak fitness and showed the mental toughness she would take to the international stage. Before she took to the senior arena, she showed her potential with fantastic performances at youth and junior levels, winning multiple medals at the Asian Youth and Junior Weightlifting Championships.
Her fame in the world came at big junior and youth world events when she broke national records. On previous world stages, she broke national clean and jerk and total lift records, rewriting record books set by veterans. These were a rare athletic journey, and she was not only competing against her peers but also redefining the bar for Indian heavyweight lifting.
Her recent high-pressure drama at the international games was a wonderful example of her strong backbone. Martina was at risk of failure (she failed to snatch two times in the first two attempts at 103 kg) and looked to be on the brink of disaster. She was totally calm and composed under pressure, and thanks to a bold decision on the part of her coaching staff to raise the weight to 105 kg, she climbed back on the platform and executed a perfect lift. The successful heave brought out a burst of emotion in the audience of millions at home, and she took that feeling to the clean and jerk stage and lifted 140 kg to better her personal bests. Though Martina Devi Maibam narrowly missed out on the podium in a fiercely contested field that was filled with world-class veterans like England's Emily Campbell, Martina Devi Maibam's performance was a testament to her greatness in this field of world-class athletes, and her career is far from being over; her name will stay at the forefront of Indian athletics in the next 50 years.
