Weightlifters continued to bag medals for India at the ongoing Commonwealth Games with Vikas Thakur being the latest addition to the list. The seasoned weightlifter claimed the silver in the men’s 96kg category, this being his third Commonwealth Games medal in three back-to-back editions.

He had won silver in Glasgow in 2014 and picked up a bronze at Gold Coast in 2018. Samoa’s Don Opeloge put in a record-breaking performance — 381kg (171kg+210kg) — to win the gold. Fiji’s Taniela Tuisuva Rainibogi walked away with the bronze with a total effort of 343kg (155kg+188kg).

Thakur’s best effort in snatch was 155kg. In clean and jerk, he lifted 191kg, but failed to master 198kg in his final lift. Harjinder luck Late on Monday, Harjinder Kaur won a bronze after a quite dramatic turn of events in the women’s 71kg weightlifting competition.

One legal lift in clean and jerk from Nigerian Joy Eze, who was in contention for the gold after the snatch section, would have meant a fourthplace finish for Harjinder. But as luck would have it, Joy ended up with three failed attempts in the clean and jerk category. That gave the bronze medal to Harjinder, who totalled 212kg (93kg+119kg).

England’s Sarah Davies won the gold with a total of 229 kgs, while Canada’s Alexis Ashworth bagged the silver with 214. “I was hoping against hope that something would happen — and luckily for me, it did,” Harjinder, a 25-year-old lifter from Nabha, Punjab, said.

(Written with inputs from PTI)