The world saw her talent on the biggest stage after she won a silver medal at the 2026 IPF World Sub-Junior and Junior Classic Powerlifting Championships in Sun City, South Africa. Keyaa Banerji’s name is all over the internet. not many are aware of the hard yards she has been putting in behind the scenes for the last few years While the world continues to go gaga over her heroics of lifting three times her body weight.
“There is a common misconception that weightlifting and powerlifting are the same sport. Powerlifting, unlike weightlifting, is a relatively niche sport and is not included in the Olympics. I compete under the ‘IPF’, the International Powerlifting Federation, which is one of the highest levels of drug-tested Powerlifting you can compete at across the globe.
Hence, the goal would be to continue representing the country at the IPF Worlds and the Asians and continue winning,” she said. “I think there are efforts being made towards its inclusion, and I would be more than delighted if it were included in the Olympics and would definitely make it a goal to represent the country there,” she added.
“I took up Powerlifting in June of 2024, two years ago, when I was 19, and started competing professionally about eight months later. The 21-year-old said she decided to speak up after seeing people sexualise her online and make derogatory remarks about her caste. Keyaa then issued a statement on Instagram Stories, opening up about the abuse she had been facing and urging her followers not to fall prey to AI-generated or morphed content. “I’ve gotten several wonderful, positive, and encouraging messages from people all over the country, but there was definitely a dark flip side I wasn’t ready for. “Even real competition pictures had extra makeup edited onto my face, and it was quite disorienting to be seeing these images without having control over them. It only got worse when fake accounts came up on social media impersonating me and posting inappropriate AI-generated content, and my personal account was suspended. There were also several extremely disturbing and dehumanising discussions where people were sexualising me and making dehumanising comments about my caste and ancestry. I felt the need to speak up about this from a new public social media account and issue a statement to show little girls they can stand up for themselves and raise important questions about how we treat female athletes,” she added.
Back then, my rapid deadlift progression made me realise I had the potential to break the national deadlift record in my weight class and possibly qualify for the IPF Worlds, which motivated me to start competing in qualifiers,” she said. “I’ve always been a private person and only a few of my friends and family knew about my world championship, and with Powerlifting being a low-visibility sport, I was initially quite shocked to see myself everywhere on the Internet after my silver,” she added. I hadn’t shared any official competition pictures with anyone, and yet thousands of pages that went viral were posting images from my competition with my face and body edited with AI,” she said.
