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Bhavana Tokekar, a mother of 2, who won 4 gold medals for India in powerlifting

Bhavana Tokekar, a mother of 2, who won 4 gold medals for India in powerlifting
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By

Abhijit Nair

Published: 10 Jan 2021 12:27 PM GMT

Powerlifting is usually considered to be a man’s sport in India. Bulking up your body and building muscles are stereotyped as something which only men do in the country. Breaking all this stereotypes one lift a time is a mother of two and a wife of an Indian Air Force (IAF) Officer, Bhavana Tokekar.

Tokekar’s journey in the field of fitness started in 2011 when she took up cycling as a counter measure to a medicine she was prescribed. It soon gave way to proper training in gym. She was also a decent middle distance runner and had completed a couple of half marathons before trying her hand at lifting weights.

Tokekar is said to have been inspired to give weightlifting a go by the bodybuilders of Indian Air Force. A homemaker, Bhavana took the help of the internet to study and understand more about weightlifting and trained constantly for almost six years under the watchful eyes of the bodybuilding team of IAF.

Bhavana Tokekar Bhavana Tokekar

If it were the IAF officers who helped her develop an interest in weightlifting, it was her constant urge to learn more about fitness through the internet which propelled her towards Powerlifting.

Introduced to Instagram which was on an upward curve in India back then, Tokekar started following all the fitness related pages she could find at the platform. It is on Instagram that she came across the World Powerlifting Congress (WPC) Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh state head Mohammed Azmat.

Inspired by Azmat’s videos in his account, Tokekar slyly messaged him in early 2019 asking if she could be a part of the Indian powerlifting team. Azmat agreed and asked her to give the trails for the same.

There has been no looking back since for Tokekar as she successfully cleared the trails for the Masters 2 category (45-50 age group) in May 2019.

Bhavana Tokekar Bhavana Tokekar bagged four gold medals for India at the Open Asian Powerlifting Championships in Russia in July 2019

The major challenge for Tokekar after clearing the trails was to get her technique right. There is a widespread misconception that weightlifting and powerlifting are exactly the same, which, for sure, is not the case. Tokekar had to alter her technique to abide by the rules and regulations of powerlifting and she did so at a rapid pace under the watchful eyes of Azmat.

What followed was something extraordinary as within a matter of months, Tokekar bagged four gold medals for India at the Open Asian Powerlifting Championships in Russia in July 2019!

From being a homemaker and a mother to two, Bhavana Tokekar’s journey to clinching four international gold medals at the age of 47 is a nothing sort of inspiring.

Read Also: 47-yr-old woman wins gold at World Powerlifting Championship

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