CHENNAI : Kanchana P is like many of us who are willing to explore the extraordinary in the ordinary. Hidden behind her profession of being a physical education teacher in a school is the formidable avatar of being one of Madurai’s prominent female weightlifters. At 39, she is proving that age and gender can never stand as a barrier in one’s journey towards their goal.
A native of Madurai, Kanchana started accompanying her father to the gym when she was seven years old. She says, “My dad used to work out in the gym and I mostly used to spend time staring at all the equipment. Slowly, I started doing exercises like push-ups, lunges and squats. This motivated me to participate in the school-level shot put, discus throw and kabaddi competitions, from class 4. I performed well in these events. My sports teacher back then, Aveda Thaai took note of my performances and asked me to focus on sports.”
Under Aveda Thaai’s guidance, Kanchana also started her training in weightlifting. In 1993, the class 9 student won her first laurel in weightlifting by bagging the third prize at a district-level tournament. She continued her training under Bala Murugan, her personal coach after entering college. She won a silver medal at the annual Tamil Nadu state-level weightlifting championship held in Tiruchengode in 1997. “Back then, it wasn’t conventional for a woman from a rural background to take up a sport like weightlifting but I was able to do it with the support of my family,” she says.
While she kept winning laurels in weightlifting, she also took up her second undergraduate degree in Physical Education at the Alagappa University. She joined as a PE teacher at the John Bosco Matriculation School in Kovilpatti in 1999. In 2001, she moved to Madurai and has been working as a PE teacher at the Sri Sarada Vanam Matriculation Girls’ Higher Secondary School ever since.She has also won gold in the 86+ kg category at a national-level weightlifting event held in Uttarakhand recently.
The mother of two also coaches girls, and some of her students have also won at state-level tournaments. “Weightlifting isn’t an easy sport, it requires focus and willpower. You need to train hard, every day. You should also monitor your food intake that should be inclusive of proteins, particularly eggs and meat. I want my students to outshine me and win bigger laurels in the sport and life,” she shares. In the future, Kanchana’s dream is to build an exclusive all-women gym with a capacity to accommodate at least 50 and train more women in weightlifting. “Madurai and its women have a lot of untapped potential,” she adds.