Champions’ village weighed down by neglect

Once a hub of champion weightlifters who won national and international laurels, Voosavanipeta is nothing but a ghost of its former prowess. With not a single aspiring sportsperson here, the village, which carried on its shoulders the tradition of nurturing weightlifting for hundreds of years, is now threatened to lose its identity. The village which introduced weightlifting to the first Indian woman olympian, Karanam Malleswari, struggles to keep the great sport alive amid a lack of patronage and infrastructure, writes T. APPALA NAIDU