ਹਰਜਿੰਦਰ ਕੌਰਹਰਜਿੰਦਰ ਕੌਰ

Harjinder Kaur is an Indian weightlifter from Mehas village near Nabha in Punjab who won the silver medal in the women's 69 kg at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Born on 14 October 1996 into a landless farming family, she built her strength working a hand chaff-cutter before she ever touched a barbell, and her personal-best total of 227 kg in Glasgow made her one of India's most decorated lifters.

ਮੁੱਢਲਾ ਜੀਵਨ

Harjinder Kaur was born on 14 October 1996 in Mehas, a village near Nabha in Patiala district. Her father, Sahib Singh, and mother, Kuldeep Kaur, worked as agricultural labourers, and the family lived in a single-room house with little money to spare. Her brother, Pritpal Singh, grew up alongside her in the same hard conditions.

As a child, Harjinder cycled about five kilometres from Mehas to Nabha every day to attend school, often pushing the bicycle home when a tyre punctured because there was no money to repair it on the spot. At home she helped her father with farm work, spending hours each day turning a heavy hand-operated chaff-cutter, known as a toka, to chop straw for cattle fodder. The work was done out of need, not training, yet it built the upper-body power that would later carry her on the lifting platform. Her father had himself taken part in village weightlifting contests in his youth, so strength was already part of the family's story.

Money for sport was always short. Her father took loans to pay for her training, food and travel to competitions, and neighbours at times questioned a family that encouraged its daughter to pursue sport. Her parents held firm, and they kept education at the centre of the home even when money was at its scarcest. Pritpal later recalled his father telling the children to study well whatever the family's condition, and promising to do everything possible to support their education and their dreams.

From kabaddi to weightlifting

Harjinder did not start out as a weightlifter. She began playing kabaddi in Class XI as a raider, cycling five kilometres a day to train, and it was her first coach, Paramjit Sharma, who noticed her strength and encouraged her to try tug of war. The move suited her, and from tug of war the step to weightlifting followed. She took up the sport in 2016, at the age of 20, while studying at Punjabi University in Patiala.

The change was not easy. At one stage she thought about quitting because she worried that weightlifting would change her body, and it took her parents' encouragement to keep her going. They told her not to think that way and to focus on building her future through the sport she loved. She stayed, and the rise that followed was steady rather than sudden: an inter-university title, a state championship, and the 2020 Khelo India University Games title. She trained at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala, the same campus that has shaped generations of Indian athletes.

Her progress showed in her first years on the national stage, and by 2021 she was lifting for India abroad. The girl who had cycled to school in Mehas was now competing against the best lifters in the Commonwealth.

Commonwealth medals

Harjinder's international breakthrough came at the 2021 Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships in Tashkent, where she won silver in the women's 71 kg with a total lift of 211 kg. A year later she stood on the podium at the Commonwealth Games themselves.

At Birmingham 2022 she competed in the women's 71 kg and finished with bronze, lifting 93 kg in the snatch and 119 kg in the clean and jerk for a total of 212 kg. The medal came in dramatic fashion. She had failed her opening snatch and sat fourth after that section, and it looked as though the podium would pass her by until Nigeria's Joy Ogbonne Eze, one of the favourites, failed all three of her clean and jerk attempts at 125 kg. The door opened, and Harjinder stepped through it for her first Commonwealth Games medal.

She kept building. At the 2025 Commonwealth Championships in Ahmedabad she won bronze in the lighter 69 kg class, the weight she would make her own in the season that followed.

Glasgow 2026: silver and three national records

The 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow produced the finest performance of Harjinder's career. In the women's 69 kg final she made all six of her lifts: 95 kg, 99 kg and 101 kg in the snatch, then 120 kg, 123 kg and 126 kg in the clean and jerk. Her total of 227 kg was a personal best by a wide margin, and it broke the Commonwealth Games snatch record twice during the competition.

The final lift also rewrote the Indian record books. She set new national records in the snatch, the clean and jerk and the total in the 69 kg class, all on the same evening. Canada's Charlotte Simoneau won the gold with a Games record total of 240 kg, and Australia's Nya Phebe Hayman took bronze with 218 kg, but the silver belonged to the lifter from Mehas, and it was India's seventh weightlifting medal of those Games.

The win travelled far beyond Glasgow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated her on the silver and on a personal best, and her family in Mehas celebrated a journey that had begun with a bicycle, a chaff-cutter and a father's loans. An hour before the competition she had telephoned her brother Pritpal to tell him she felt fit and certain of winning gold or silver, and her confidence proved right.

What happened at the Asian Games?

Two months after Glasgow, Harjinder made her Asian Games debut at Aichi-Nagoya in Japan, one of four Indian women weightlifters picked for the continental stage. The competition did not go her way. She managed 94 kg in the snatch after two attempts at 97 kg were ruled out, then made a single clean and jerk of 110 kg to finish ninth in the women's 69 kg with a total of 204 kg, well below her Glasgow form.

The result was a reminder of how thin the line is at the top of the sport: the same lifter who had made six lifts from six attempts in Glasgow missed twice in Nagoya and fell out of medal contention early. India's weightlifting campaign at those Games ended with a single medal, the silver won by her senior teammate Mirabai Chanu in the 49 kg, and Harjinder returned to training at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala.

Life beyond the platform

Away from competition, Harjinder works for the Income Tax Department, the job that gives her a living beyond sport, and she has been honoured with the prestigious Maharaja Ranjit Singh Award. Her brother Pritpal, who once watched her push a punctured bicycle home from school, now watches her lift for India.

Her story is told often in Punjab because it is easy to recognise: a girl from a small village, a family with little money, work that nobody would call training, and a late start in a sport she found by chance at the age of 20. None of it looked like a path to a Commonwealth medal, and that is why it matters. For girls in villages like Mehas, Harjinder Kaur is proof that the distance from a farm courtyard to an international podium can be crossed, one lift at a time.