Media Release

Udupi, Apr 26: Gulshan Banu Kazi, a 43-year-old mother of three who works for TAHSEEL and whose work involves debt collection for the bank. Living in Sharjah she manages training and recently took part in the WPC national powerlifting championship securing four gold medals in Bengaluru qualifying her for the WPC International championship. Kazi won the best lifter award in masters and bagged a gold medal in weight class in women's open there. She also won gold medals in the individual deadlift event bagging the highest deadlift of 162.5ksg which was the highest pulled by a woman there.

Kazi used to be 100+kgs till 2016 when she suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis. Resistance training and tracking her food intake enabled her to start losing weight and gaining muscle. Soon after, she was introduced to powerlifting and has been consistent at it ever since. Previously, she competed at a few championships in UAE and did well there. She has two coaches she is grateful to Raju Pal and Mohammad Azmat.

Coach Raju introduced her to the sport and taught her all the basics. Coach Azmat is a multiple-time national and international medalist, having won medals for India in different federations. He has been coaching her for the past few months.

The journey was not easy. Kazi has been doing this for four-plus years and never imagined she would reach so far when she started out. The sport of powerlifting is not recognised by many governments and the masses do not know anything about the three events involved in it.

She is now training for the international championship which will be held later this year and Kazi is keen to represent India there and set records in her weight and age class.