As a young, handsome teenager, Jeremy Lalrinnunga changes the background of his phone quite often. The photo is usually of him traveling with friends or with a new tattoo. However, on May 4 of this year, Jeremy posted a different image. The image against a solid black background is of the gold medal from the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
“When the Commonwealth Games medal design was released, I immediately downloaded the photo from social media. I kept the gold medal as my background. Since it’s my phone wallpaper, it’s the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, and it’s the last thing I see before I go to sleep. It’s a huge motivation for me,” Lalrinnunga told Sportstar a few weeks ago.
On Sunday at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, Jeremy manifested that vision into reality, becoming India’s second gold medalist at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Jeremy competed in the men’s 67kg competition and took a 140kg tug and then made a 160kg tug for a total of 300kg (game record). He finished 7 kg ahead of his closest competitor.
“When the Commonwealth Games medal design was released, I immediately downloaded the photo from social media. I kept the gold medal as my background,” Lalrinnunga said. | Photo credits: SPECIAL PACKAGE
If Jeremy had visualized the Commonwealth Games gold medal for himself, many others would have too. Since becoming the first Indian to win a gold medal in the Youth Olympics four years ago (and even before), the 19-year-old from Aizawl, Mizoram, has been marked as something special. But while injuries have somewhat flattened his career trajectory, the hope is that Commonwealth Games gold may be just the shot in the arm he needs to get things going again.
Jeremy has always been a fan of shiny things. As a child growing up in Aizawl, Mizoram, he had a few “toys” that he especially loved. They were medals – father Lalneihtluanga was an accomplished boxer and had won two gold medals at the national level among juniors. “They hung on the wall of our house. But my brothers and I played with them all the time. We pretended to be champions. We even lost one of his medals while playing,” recalls Jeremy.
Lalneihtluanga didn’t mind his kids — Jeremy is the middle of five brothers — playing with his medals, but he expected them to win a few of their own. “They had two options. They can be boxing or weightlifting,” he says. At the age of eight, Jeremy chose the latter. “I thought it would be fun. It seemed like something men should do,” he says. Like other children, he started at the Weightlifting Academy at the State Sports Coaching Center in Aizawl, where he learned to lift weights using bamboo sticks and bongs.
From an early age it was clear that the little boy was made for bigger things. A year into his training, after a trial period, he was selected to train at the Army Sports Institute in Pune in 2011. It was a life-changing step. “I didn’t know anything before I came to Pune. I only spoke to Mizo. I couldn’t even talk to anyone,” he says. Today, Jeremy speaks Hindi and English and is familiar with Punjabi as he has been part of the national camp in Patiala since 2015. But even he will admit that he expresses himself best under the Olympic size steel beam.
While the Youth Olympics were where he burst into the national reckoning, he already had the attention of the international weightlifting community in 2016 when he won silver in the 56kg men’s division at the age of 13, despite taking the number one spot. was the second youngest athlete in the competition. He would go on to win silver one more time at the 2017 World Championships, followed by silver and bronze at the 2018 Asian Youth Championships, and finally the historic gold in Buenos Aires.
There was little doubt that Jeremy was a prodigious talent. Vijay Sharma, who coached Mirabai Chanu to Olympic silver, isn’t always lavish with praise, but he makes an exception for Jeremy. “He is special. He’s obviously divine, but what really helps is his complete dedication to the sport. That’s a rare trait at his age,” Sharma says.
But just as his career was taking off, Jeremy appeared to have stalled – his best overall and national record of 306kg was set two years ago in 2019 – thanks to a string of injuries. In early 2021, a cyst in the back of the knee required surgery, which saw him return medalless at the 2021 Asian Championships and the 2021 World Junior Championships. When he appeared to have returned in some form, winning gold at the 2021 Commonwealth Championships , he suffered another injury.
This was a much more challenging one. While attempting a deadlift during a workout in February this year, Jeremy felt a sharp pain stripe down his spine. The injury would be diagnosed as a bulging intervertebral disc. While he initially risked missing the CWG, a combination of skillful therapy, pain management, and a determination to make the games ensured Jeremy recovered in time. “It was a bit disappointing because I had to stop training completely for a month. At that time I was only doing therapy work and reinforcement. It was very frustrating,” he says. However, whenever he had a moment of self-doubt, he just looked at his phone to remind himself what he was working for.
There are other sacrifices that are not as visible as an injury. As someone who was picked up when he was just 11 and expected to devote himself to weightlifting, it’s easy to forget that Jeremy is still a young man. “Injuries are hard. But the hardest part is staying away from my family. I’ve been training away from them since I was nine. The last time I went home was in July 2020. I couldn’t attend my brothers wedding and I haven’t celebrated Christmas at home since 2017. I miss being with my mother very much. I have now become used to eating North Indian food. I have adapted so that I can live anywhere. But I always think eating my mom’s food, I miss eating her pork curry and the cooked vegetables we get at home,” he says.
Jeremy does what he can to remind himself of home. “Before I exercise, I listen to Punjabi songs. But once I’m done training, I listen to a lot of Mizo music. They are mostly devotional things. I listen a lot to singer Vanlalsailova. Nowadays I listen to ‘I dam leh ngei dawn’”, he says.
Jeremy says he often thinks about what he would do if he went back. “When I was younger I used to box with my brothers or play football with them. At camp we can’t play these matches because there is always a risk of injury and when that happens you lose a lot of training time. But if I could go back home, I would go out on the field and play some football,” he says.
All that, as the wallpaper on his phone reminds him, had to wait as he chased the Commonwealth gold medal. Now that he has it, he plans to go home for a few days. But any return home will be short-lived. Now that he has won the CWG gold, he is already looking ahead. “We have the World Championships at the end of the year and then the start of the qualifying period for the Paris Olympics. That’s my goal now,” he says.
And just in case he forgets, he plans to give himself a reminder. “My phone wallpaper until the Commonwealth Games was the gold medal. Then it will be the Olympic rings,” he says.
.
0 Comments