Karnam Malleswari was India’s saving grace

The iron woman of Indian weightlifting gave a performance of her lifetime at the 2000 Games to claim a bronze medal

It would require an Oprah Winfrey to make Karnam Malleswari talk. Silent, reticent and taciturn, you can hardly hear a mumble from her. The only noise one generally gets to hear from her is high decibel grunt when she does heavy lifts. Malleswari was never known to be a woman of words. Even when her hard-earned land in home town was occupied by some miscreants, she did not make noise. She merely informed an elderly person who she trusted.

On September 19, 2000, she was unusually and uncharacteristically angry. She was furious with the Indian journalists. It was not the Malleswari one knew.

She was lashing out at a journalist who wrote a few days before the Sydney Olympics that Malleswari was incessantly guzzling beer and gorging on chicken and that she failed to control her weight. If not an Olympic weightlifter, who would you think needs a bit of chicken and beer? A Kareena Kapoor?

But in a way the scathing report seemed to have inspired the 25-year-old lifter, a school dropout, who did not study beyond high school. Malleswari, however, managed to know what was written about her in an English magazine.

Inspired and determined, the 25-year-old Andhra girl gave performance of her lifetime. Never before she had participated in the 69kg category. Malleswari would have been a favourite in the 63 kg. Bronze in 69 kg, could have been a gold in 63 kg.

But it was not in her control. She did what was in her control — give her best.

Never before did an Indian woman win a medal at the Olympic Games. Never before a woman carried so much weight on her shoulders. She had the burden of billion hopes. The heavy iron plates on her shoulders were heavier than their original weight. But she carried them. Where PT Usha failed 16 years ago, Malleswari succeeded.

That day at the Sydney Convention Centre in the bustling Darling Harbour, Malleswari had a combined lift of 240 kg (110 snatch and 130 in snatch and jerk), 2.5 kg less than gold and silver medal winners Weining Lee of China and Erzebet Markus of Hungary lifted. But her total lift was better than her previous best.

If not for a tactical error, she may have won gold. The muscles in her frames were made of iron. She was not just a muscle woman. An iron woman. The power woman of Indian sport.

Malleswari’s tryst with weightlifting started by accident. Being in the neighbourhood of a gym in her village Oosavanipeta in Andhra Pradesh helped her. Being in the neighbourhood of a weightlifter helped her too. The lifter Neelamsetty Apanna enticed her into weightlifting, although she now steadfastly denies that Apanna had any contribution to her growth as a weightlifter.

Born in a family of four sisters and a brother, Malleswari followed the footsteps of elder sister Narsamma, who was from the Apanna stable. The sisters concentrated on the sport as her father, a constable in Railway Police Force, was unable to afford their education. Initially Apanna took care of her career and later the sports centres groomed her.

The Indian Olympic Association and the Sports Authority of India are known for their notoriety to back the wrong horse. But in Malleswari they had a right horse. She was a rare success of a rotten system.

But the Olympic medal was not all about the system. It was a tribute to her sheer nerve, a fierce will and hard work. She has been winning medals at world stage since 1994 in different categories — from 54 to 69 — and at different levels — from Asian to World. The pinnacle, however, came in Sydney. That bronze was worth its weight in gold.