Bhubaneswar: Promising Odia weightlifter Bhaktaram Desti won a gold medal on the opening day of the Commonwealth Senior, Junior and Youth Championship in the South Pacific island nation of Samoa on Tuesday.
The 20-year-old weightlifter lifted 185 kg in the 49-kg category.
Hailing from a poor farmer family of Chitrakonda area in Malkangiri district, Bhaktaram had won gold in the 62nd School National Games at Warangal in Andhra Pradesh in 2016.
Later, he bagged the gold medal in the 1st Khelo India School Games in New Delhi in 2018 and bagged another gold medal in the Youth National Championship at Nagpur the same year, setting a new national record.
This January the young Odia weightlifter won a gold and set a new national record in the 49-kg boys’ category lifting 186 kg (81 kg in snatch and 105 kg in clean & jerk) in the Khelo India Youth Games in Pune.
