NEW DELHI: India’s
Gururaja claimed silver in the men’s 56kg
weightlifting
event at the 2018
Commonwealth Games
, thus handing India its first medal at the quadrennial event on the opening day.
ALSO READ: India at CWG, day 1: Srikanth wins, women’s hockey team losesAfter lifting his best weight of 111kg in the snatch, the 28-year-old added 138kg in his third attempt in the clean and jerk to end with a total lift of 249kg - achieving his personal best.
Malaysia’s Muhammad Izhar Ahmad won gold with a total lift of 261kg - a Commonwealth Games record - while bronze went to Sri Lanka’s Chaturanga Lakmal (248kg).
In 2017, Gururaja had claimed a Commonwealth Championships bronze in Australia.
An employee of the Indian Air Force, Gururaja, who began weightlifting in 2010, had won gold in the Commonwealth senior weightlifting championship, lifting a personal best of 249kg (108+141) in Penang in 2016. Earlier that year, he won gold at the South Asian Games.
The son of a pick-up-truck driver, Gururaja hails from Kundapura in coastal Karnataka and started out as a wrestler before switching to powerlifting and then weightlifting.