By the time he walks out of Glasgow’s Armadillo Arena for the last time on Sunday afternoon, Rishikanta Singh’s phone will be ringing incessantly — family, friends, politicians and well-wishers all wanting a moment of his time. When he returns to India, there will be felicitations and prize money. They will all be well deserved.
Just a few minutes before, the 28-year-old snatched 121 kg and followed that up with a clean and jerk lift of 143 kg for a total of 264 kg to win silver in the men’s 60 kg weight division in the weightlifting competition. It is India’s second medal of the Commonwealth Games.
Rishikanta was chasing gold and was just ahead of Malaysia’s Mohammad Bin Kasdan Aniq after the snatch portion, but ultimately finished short by nine kilos. Regardless, Rishikanta will have entered the history books with a games record in the snatch and as he stood on the podium, his future seemed to be as bright as the smile on his face and the silver around his neck.
There was a time not that long ago though when there only seemed to be dark clouds on his horizon and when the only time Rishikanta’s phone rang was when he was being called for a job at one of the many construction sites in Imphal, Manipur. Around his shoulders wasn’t a ribbon bearing a medal but a heavy load of bricks and construction equipment.
For nearly a year as a teenager, Rishikanta had traded the barbell for manual labour. He worked on building sites and as a helper at a truck stop eatery. “I had stopped most of my contact with my friends in the weightlifting community. It was as if my dream of being a top weightlifter and my future in the sport was over. I took whatever job I could. At that time I was just thinking where I would go to work next,” he recalls.
It wasn’t that Rishikanta didn’t have potential. Even in 2017, he was already a national youth champion and a bronze medallist at the youth commonwealth Games. But although the medals he had won as a youngster had brought recognition, there was no security to go with it. With little financial support and no clear path forward, he walked away from the sport.
Rishikanta, right, was already a youth champion at the junior level before he was forced to step away from the sport. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
To understand why Rishikanta made the decision he did, you’d have to go back to his roots.
No tradition
Although Manipur has a storied tradition in women’s weightlifting, paradoxically, it has produced few men’s lifters of note. Indeed, Rishikanta is not only the first men’s weightlifting medallist at the Commonwealth Games from the state but was also the first to even compete at a Games.
Rishikanta’s introduction to the sport was almost accidental.
Growing up in the village of Ngairangbam in the Imphal West district just outside the state capital in the North Eastern State, Rishikanta had no idea that weightlifting was even a sport. “The only thing I knew at that time was that I wanted to be some sort of sportsperson. I actually hoped I would become a footballer some day,” he says.
It was during a local sports program organised in his village during the Holi festivities that a sports teacher saw the 12-year-old and suggested he try his luck at the Sports Authority of India facility at Imphal’s Khuman Lampak Stadium. “He told me that I’d be taught a sport and that I would get free food if I got selected to a training program,” Rishikanta recalls.
The next day, Rishikanta travelled to Imphal in search of an opportunity. There was no elaborate support system. He made the journey largely on his own, navigating the Sports Authority of India selection process with little understanding of how elite sport functioned.
“My father is a cab driver. There was no one to tell me how these things worked. I went there by myself,” he recalled. Officials asked him to submit his details and told him to return when the trials were held. The opportunity did not come immediately, but eventually he earned his chance to enter the system.
He initially trained in three separate sports -- boxing, football and weightlifting-- before finally being picked to train in the weightlifting program.
Rishikanta would make the 40 kilometer round trip each day from his home to the stadium on his cycle but he didn’t mind. “I thought I was really lucky because I was getting a chance to train and that I was getting something to eat at the stadium after I trained. I knew at my home it was not going to be easy for my parents to provide that for me,” he recalls.
Rishikanta initially trained in three separate sports -- boxing, football and weightlifting-- before finally being picked to train in the weightlifting program. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
For all his enthusiasm, Rishikanta realised early on that his coaches didn’t share it. “At that time most of the focus was on women’s weightlifting. No one really had any expectations for the men’s lifters. I remember when I first competed at a youth National championships in Delhi, I was made to compete in a weight category much heavier than my body weight even though I was good enough to medal if I had taken part in a category that was suited to me. When I asked the coach, he said I should be grateful that I was taken to a national competition in the first case,” he says.
None of this dimmed his eagerness or his obvious talent. As a junior he won his first national title in 2016 and was then picked for the Junior Commonwealth Championships in Malaysia the following year where he won his first international medal – a bronze.
But what should have been the breakout moment for his career turned out to be when Rishikanta wad forced to call it quits.
“Not long after I returned from the Commonwealth Championships, I learned that I wasn’t going to be part of the SAI training center in Imphal. That program was only for athletes who were juniors and I was now over the age limit,” he recalls. He didn’t know what to do. “I didn’t know anyone who gave me the right advice. Neither my seniors nor my coaches told me what I could do or where I could go. No one told me how I could even get a job through my sports. At that time it seemed no one cared what I did,” he recalls.
A future ended
Training out of his home wasn’t an option either. “Back then, I depended entirely on the SAI program for my nutrition needs. My family isn’t well to do and I had a younger brother who was good in studies. So, I decided I would give up my career and earn money so that I could educate my brother,” he recalls.
Over the next year, one of India’s brightest junior prospects disappeared from the sport altogether. Instead of chasing medals, he reported for manual labour. On some days, he carried bricks, stones and mortar. On other days, he worked at a dhaba, cleaning the floor and serving food to truck drivers.
The work was physically demanding and not even well paying. “I probably made between 150 or 200 rupees a day,” he recalls. All of this went to supporting his brother. His diet comprised whatever he was given. “Even if I wasn’t supporting my brother, it’s not possible to get a good diet with milk and eggs at 200 a day. I wasn’t even sure I’d make that much in a day. I was just eating whatever was at home and sometimes that meant that I was going to be skipping my dinner or morning meals,” he recalls.
For nearly a year this was his routine. But all of a sudden, Rishikanta says he got a call on his mobile phone that changed his life. It was from the Manipur Weightlifting Federation secretary Sunil Elangbam. Contrary to what Rishikanta thought, he hadn’t been forgotten entirely. “He said ‘hello beta, how is training going?’ I told him I have left weightlifting. I explained that I didn’t have the money to support my training. Sunil sir heard me and asked if I still wanted to train if I got the opportunity and I said of course I did,” Rishikanta says.
The call ended and a day later, Rishikanta was told he had been admitted to the newly-opened Weightlifting Center of Excellence in Takyel in Imphal. He joined immediately.
“When I look back at my life I think this was the turning point of my career. I knew it was as if I was starting my career from the beginning but I was so happy that I got the chance. I finally got the diet and training I needed. In Khuman Lampak I’d get maybe one egg a day although the coach would look out for me and let me eat a bit more. But in Takyel you got the diet like you get in the national camps,” he recalls.
Not long after, Rishikanta was back at the level he was when he had left the sport. A year later, he won his first senior national gold medal in the men’s 55kg category. That win earned him a job with the Indian Navy, which in turn eased his financial worries further.
Since then Rishikanta has gone from strength to strength. He regularly medalled at the national championships and although a wrist injury prevented him from competing at the selection trials for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, his career graph has only moved in one direction. At the 2025 World Championships, he cemented his claim as the best lifter in his weight class in India setting a new national record en route a 11th place finish at the World Championships and then improved it at the 2025 Commonwealth Championships the same year.
Through all this, Rishikanta says he’s been helping out other young boys weightlifters from his state. “I want to make sure they don’t endure the lack of opportunities that I suffered. I offer advice and when I can I contribute with kit and finances. But, most of all, I wanted to be a role model to let them know what is possible,” he says.
Over the past few months, as the CWG neared though, Rishikanta remained, for the most part, laser focused.
At Glasgow, although, he didn’t get the result he had hoped for, Rishikanta will know that for him to even be at this stage is remarkable enough. “I remember a time when I thought my dream of being a sportsperson was over. I didn’t have a future. It would have been so easy for me to be still working in some construction site somewhere. If people knew me, they’d know me as Rishikanta the daily wage worker,” he says.
Instead from Sunday afternoon, as he stands on the podium with the tricolor around his shoulders and a silver medal around his neck, he’ll be Rishikanta, the Commonwealth Games medallist
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Published on Jul 26, 2026