Pursuing weightlifting was not as easy for Lovepreet Singh, who on Wednesday clinched a bronze at the ongoing Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
It all started when he saw a few youngsters from his village lifting weights. Lovepreet was around 13 years old then when he was attracted to the sport and decided to pursue it as a career. Financial insecurity stood as an obstacle in his way. Still, Lovepreet never felt low about that. He started helping wholesale vegetable vendors in Amritsar mandi to earn extra money thereby sustaining his weightlifting dream. Given the work he had chosen, he had to run early at 4 am and rush home back by 6 am to get ready and leave for training. That too couldn't extend him extra money. Hence, he decided to work part-time at the vegetable market.
This struggle continued for years but Lovepreet's hard work paid off and he started winning weightlifting titles. One such title helped him land a job with the Indian navy. He appeared in the Indian navy trials and got selected. Working there for more than five years helped him a lot. His family also tried to pool money for Lovepreet to make sure that his training continued.
All the past struggles helped the 24-year-old lifter to a great extent at the CWG weightlifting platform as he started strongly by lifting 157kg in his first attempt. Making it 161kg in his next attempt and later broke the tournament by 163kg in his last attempt.
Things heated up between contestants such as Junior Periclex Ngadja Nyabeyeu from Cameroon and Aussie Jackson George Roberts-Young entered the fray with heavy weight lifts. Meanwhile, Lovepreet was steadily increasing weight in his section. At last, registering the weightlift of 192kg placed him at the top of the table for a brief period. He finally adds to India's weightlifting winning the bronze medal.
Such talented minds such as Lovepreet reflect all of us a larger message that even if tough situations have chained the way to triumph yet we can always break it to traverse the path to success.
"The path to success requires massive determined action" - Tony Robbins.