-News n Pics : Praveen L. Carvalho
Aurangabad, July 20, 2026 — The season that began with a state podium in Mangalore has now closed with a national bronze medal in Maharashtra. Roshan Lobo, the 41-year-old powerlifter from Hosala Barkur, claimed third place in the 83 kg category at the National Classic Powerlifting Championship held today at Garkheda Stadium, Aurangabad.
The result caps a five-month stretch that took Lobo from a domestic championship in his home state to two separate national assignments — first the All India Masters Championship earlier this month, and now this Classic event, competing this time in the 83 kg weight class.
For an athlete who has spent much of the year weighing in across different categories and formats, the shift from 93 kg to 83 kg is itself a story worth noting. Cutting weight while maintaining strength output demands a different kind of discipline than simply showing up to lift — one built on precise nutrition planning and body-composition management layered on top of an already irregular training schedule dictated by his job.
That job is the part of Lobo's story that rarely gets its due. Between competitions, he is rarely in one place long enough to follow a conventional periodised programme. His preparation instead happens in bursts — whatever hours he can claim at J.P. Gym Barkur, under coach Nithin Poojari, whenever work brings him back to the coast. Today's bronze is, in a sense, a validation of that improvised method: proof that consistency doesn't always require routine, only intent.
It also places Lobo in rare company. Bronze at a national-level Classic championship, arriving on the back of a Masters-category selection just weeks earlier, suggests his competitiveness isn't confined to the age-adjusted brackets where masters lifters typically measure themselves against peers. Stepping into the open Classic field and still returning with a medal is a different proposition altogether — one that speaks to raw strength numbers, not just category-relative scoring.
The Karnataka Powerlifting Association, which fielded him for the state team earlier this year, will likely see today's finish as further justification of the faith it placed in him. Where his February outing in Mangalore functioned as a qualifying platform — the event that opened the door to his national selections — Aurangabad has served as the proving ground, the place where those selections were tested against the country's best and came away with hardware to show for it.
Lobo has not indicated what comes next. But a year that has taken him through state meets, an Indore silver, a Masters berth, and now a Classic bronze on foreign turf suggests a lifter in no hurry to plateau — one for whom each competition seems less like a peak and more like a stepping stone to the next one.