Age no bar for this powerlifter

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 14

Having left competitions in bench press nearly two decades back, Raj Kumar Chouhan, a resident of Basti Sheikh area, has won accolades yet again.

The 43-year-old has not just recently won gold medal in the National Bench Press Competition held in Goa, but has also created a national-level record in the master category.

Chouhan, more popular with his name Sonu, proudly shared: “In my 83-kg weight bracket, the national record so far was of lifting 145 kg but I broke it going up to 150 kg. In my younger days, I had won the third place in Punjab in the sub-junior category. I played up to Class XII but then I got into work and could not continue with the game. But I surely missed it and always thought of resuming it one day.”

Running a business of PVC taps and skipping rope manufacturing, Chouhan said he had started practising bench press at Shiv Mandir in Basti Sheikh. “A pathan is learnt to have donated plates at the temple way back in 1946. My father Prithvi Raj Chouhan, who was an amateur weightlifter and trainer, used to go there for practice. I used to accompany him to the temple where I started practising lifting weights in my school days. There was neither any sports club in those days nor was any professional training available in those days. I would just observe how the senior players practised and kept copying them and asking them about the rules of the game,” he recalled.

Owing to some circumstances, Chouhan said he had competed in the 83-kg category even then, but could not go much further into competitions. “Now that I am settled in my business and my kids who are in Classes VII and III are much independent, I decided to start all over again. I had continued giving free training at the temple in my area and had already been maintaining a good fitness level. I restarted the game in 2018 and won gold at the national level the same year. I won a silver in 2019 and even participated in an International Powerlifting Federation competition held in Japan and came sixth the same year. But there were brakes again on the game as Covid came in. As the tournaments started all over again, I went for the state selection tournament in October this year at Patiala and got through,” he shared.

Chouhan said that it was his like his dream coming true when he won at the national level. “I felt that an aim that I had set in my life more than 20 years ago had finally been achieved. Even a bigger satisfaction for me was the fact that I have played a very natural game, taking all natural food and no supplements or steroids,” he said.

He said the only issue coming to him was that there was no government support for international tournaments. “I intend to meet Punjab Sports Minister Pargat Singh for some assistance in this regard”, he concluded.