Name: Karnam Malleswari
Born: 1 June 1975, Voosavanipeta, Srikakulam district
State: Andhra Pradesh
Sport: Weightlifting
Early life
Karnam Malleswari grew up in a village in Srikakulam district and started weightlifting at the age of twelve under coach Neelamshetty Appanna. Recognising her promise, her family sent her to Delhi to train and live with a married sister, and it was there that the Sports Authority of India spotted her talent and brought her into its national training camp in 1990, still only a young teenager among seasoned lifters. Weightlifting was, at the time, a sport with almost no profile for Indian women, and her willingness to leave home so young to pursue it said a great deal about both her own ambition and her family’s support.
A world champion by twenty
Malleswari’s rise through the international ranks was rapid. She won bronze at the 1993 World Championships in Melbourne, then gold in the 54 kg category at both the 1994 World Championships in Istanbul and the 1995 World Championships in Guangzhou, setting a new mark of 113 kg in the clean and jerk at the latter. She added the 1995 Asian Championship title in Korea in the same weight class, along with silver at the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima, building a reputation as one of the most consistent lifters in world weightlifting through the mid-1990s, at a time when the sport barely registered on the Indian sporting radar outside a small circle of specialists and coaches.
Marriage, a break, and a return
Malleswari married fellow weightlifter Rajesh Tyagi in 1997 and stepped away from competition for a period, returning in 1998 for the Bangkok Asian Games, where she won silver in the 63 kg category, by then India’s first weightlifting medal at that event. She struggled to rediscover her best form immediately afterwards, missing out on a medal at the 1999 World Championships, but the disappointment did not last long, and she used the following year to rebuild her strength and technique in the lead-up to what would become the biggest competition of her career.
Bronze in Sydney
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, competing in the 69 kg category, Malleswari lifted 110 kg in the snatch and 130 kg in the clean and jerk for a total of 240 kg, enough for the bronze medal. It made her the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal in any sport, and India’s only medal of the Sydney Games, a result that turned her into a household name overnight and remains one of the defining moments in the country’s Olympic history. Her feat came at a time when Indian weightlifting had almost no international standing among women, and it opened doors for the generation of lifters who followed her onto the Olympic stage.
Later life
Malleswari gave birth to a son in 2001 and planned a comeback for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, but withdrew from competition following the death of her father. She retired from the sport after the 2004 Athens Olympics, by which point she had amassed close to thirty international medals over her career. She went on to build a career in public service, working as a Chief General Manager with the Food Corporation of India, and in June 2021 she was appointed vice-chancellor of the Delhi government’s newly established Sports University, a role that lets her continue shaping the next generation of Indian athletes and pass on lessons from a career built on hard training, discipline and quiet persistence rather than natural size or advantage.
Achievements and awards
Bronze medallist, 69 kg category, 2000 Sydney Olympics, India’s first Olympic medal by a woman; World Champion, 54 kg category, 1994 and 1995; bronze, World Championships, 1993; Asian Champion, 1995; silver, Asian Games, 1994 and 1998; Arjuna Award, 1994; Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, 1995-96; Padma Shri, 1999.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
