Jeremy Lalrinnunga fights for Tokyo Olympics berth despite injury

The upcoming Weightlifting Junior World Championships to be held in Tashkent between May 21 to 31 will be the last qualification event for the Olympics. Indian weightlifter Jeremy Lalrinnunga will be looking to secure his place at the Olympics this time around in the 67kg category.

What makes this event crucial is that Jeremy is currently suffering from a knee injury that impacted his performance at the Asian Championships earlier this year. He has been advised by doctors to not stress the injury too much during practice and is currently training at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala. This however will be a slight problem given that he is aiming to better the 310 kg benchmark that is required to qualify for the Olympics.

His highest lift till date is 306kg that included a 140 kg snatch and a 166 kg clean and jerk lift. His Olympics qualification rank currently stands at 26 and he will have to do a lift better than that of Olympics qualification rank 20 of Korea's Myeingmok Han, owing to the qualifications that are done based on rankings.

He was quoted by the Olympic Channel saying "I am focusing more on strengthening now. I have started doing light training with the world event around the corner". Jeremy won the Gold Medal at the Youth Olympics in 2018 and has been touted to win a medal in Tokyo as well.