Lifting Bigotry

Doing sports is one thing but doing it in a way to set a new threshold is a completely different feat. Sunaina Sunaina, the heavy-weight-lifter, born on this day, was smiling when she picked the 118 kg and bagged the gold prizes like she was lifting air and flying with the wind.

Sunaina lifting weights; Source: SportsbeatIndia

The gym has been the source of body worshipping for quite some time. A gym makes you push your body to its limit and even clears your mind. It is the epitome of body construction. Most gym workouts consist of various types of weightlifting and weightlifting itself is seen as a sport. What do you visualize when you think of a gym? Huge hunks with cannons pumped full of either steroids or sweat muscles. You remember Arnold Schwarzenegger and more famous men in the bodybuilding universe.

Weightlifting involves furious lifting of weights almost two-thirds of the day every day when we cannot even handle some mental load on our bodies. It is no wonder then, that people who lift are people with some kind of different mojo in their bodies.

Sunaina Anand, hailing from a middle-class family is one of the figures in the Indian professional weightlifting team who are not appreciated enough in the sports scene of India. For women, the journey is significantly difficult as parental rejection and almost zero support from friends and family pose different threats in the making of their career. That too might be fruitless in the end due to an injury, as is with all sporting professions and weightlifting especially as one mistake might lead to torn muscles and/or ligaments that take a long time to heal. Despite all the hardships, Sunaina managed to bag some medals for India in different categories of weightlifting.

2001, Sunaina lay in conflict with her own abilities. As she had missed the bronze by 2.5 kg, a minuscule margin, it was similar to the feeling of getting 89% instead of that sweet 90%.

Would she stay in the hole of loss and misery? Four years after this defeat, she would be lifting gold in the national weightlifting championship and would also participate in the 2003 world weightlifting championships.

Lifting a weight of 118 kg, from the sweat of her brows and strained muscles; her smile would be the brightest even though she felt tearing muscle pains throughout her body. She would stand atop the podium and for a moment, all those years of hard work would seem truly worth it.