Mirabai Chanu and Commonwealth Games Weightlifting — Category, Record and How the Competition Works

Mirabai Chanu competes in the women's 49kg bodyweight class. Older articles will show her at 48kg, and both are correct for their period — the International Weightlifting Federation restructured its bodyweight categories ahead of the Tokyo Olympic cycle, and the lightest women's class shifted from 48kg to 49kg in the process.

That restructuring is the single most common source of confusion when people compare her lifts across years. A record set in the 48kg class and a result posted in the 49kg class sit in different category histories, so a straight comparison of numbers across the change is not meaningful. If you are checking a personal best or a record, check which category it belongs to first.

Bodyweight classes matter more in weightlifting than in almost any other sport because the entire competition is a ratio question: how much can this athlete lift relative to their own mass. Lifters weigh in shortly before the session, and the weigh-in also determines the order in which ties are broken — the lighter athlete wins a tie on equal total.

Below is Chanu's headline record as it stands in the archives. Every entry here is a completed, historical result. We do not report on any competition that is currently under way, and you should not take the absence or presence of an entry here as any indication about a live event.

The Glasgow connection is the detail most Indian fans enjoy. Her first Commonwealth Games medal, a silver in the 48kg class, came at Glasgow 2014 — the same city that hosts the 2026 edition. Whatever happens in any current competition, that earlier medal is part of a career that has now spanned more than a decade at the top level.

A weightlifting competition has two lifts and one number that matters. The snatch comes first: the barbell travels from the platform to a locked overhead position in a single continuous movement. The clean and jerk follows: the bar is brought to the shoulders, then driven overhead in a second movement. Each lifter gets three attempts at each lift.

The score is the total — the athlete's best successful snatch added to their best successful clean and jerk. Miss all three snatch attempts and there is no total at all, regardless of how well the clean and jerk goes. That is why the opening snatch attempt is a strategic decision rather than a warm-up: it is the attempt that guarantees a total exists.

Attempts are called in ascending bar weight, so the lifting order emerges from what each athlete declares. Coaches change declarations tactically during the session, which is why a competition can look chaotic on a live feed while being perfectly ordered underneath. Three referees judge each attempt and give a white light for good and a red light for no lift; two of three decide it.

Weightlifting sessions are short and they are decided late, which makes them easy to misread on a live feed. A lifter can look comfortably ahead with one attempt remaining and finish behind, because the athlete lifting last has the advantage of knowing precisely what they need.

Two practical things for an Indian audience. Convert the session start to IST before you plan around it — a Glasgow evening session lands very late in India. And note that provisional standings during a session can change after a jury review of a contested lift, so the board mid-session is genuinely provisional in a way that a finished result is not.

As with every page on this blog, we do not carry the live result. The official Games results system and the federation's own site publish it, and they publish it faster and more accurately than any secondary page could.