The Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medallist Chinshanlo, representing Kazakhstan but born and raised in China depending whose version of her early life you believe, attempted a world record of 130 kilograms with her final clean and jerk in the women's 55kg.

She failed with that but still finished 10kg clear of her Chinese rival Yu Linglong - a result that will have pleased her after a much-publicised dispute about her nationality.

When Chinshanlo won gold at 53kg at the 2012 London Olympic Games, finishing off with a clean and jerk world record, the Chinese state news agency and sports officials from Hunan province claimed that she was not Kazakh but Chinese.

Chinshanlo, who spoke neither Kazakh nor Russian at the time, had apparently failed to return after being given permission to train in Kazakhstan in 2008 - although the athlete has always denied that version of events and says she was born and raised in Kazakhstan.

When a stored sample from London 2012 was retested four years later it showed that Chinshanlo had taken steroids; she forfeited the Olympic gold medal and served a two-year doping ban.

Before that retest, Chinshanlo, 29, set a 53kg clean and jerk world record of 134kg in winning the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships in her "home" nation in 2014.

Today's performance was 12kg lower than her 2014 effort, despite being at a slightly higher weight class, but 95-125-220 was still her best since then in snatch, clean and jerk and total.

It was a 7kg improvement on her third-place finish in Tokyo, where Hidilyn Diaz of the Philippines and Liao Qiuyun of China finished well ahead of her.

Yu failed with her final two attempts and was beaten by 10kg, finishing 95-115-210.

She won a youth world title aged 13 in 2013 and the junior version three years later but had not competed internationally since then, and never as a senior.

The 18-year-old Uzbekistan lifter Nigora Abdullaeva made all six lifts for third place on 87-106-193, a personal best by 15kg at this weight.

There was another failed world record attempt in the men’s 61kg when Jia Xionghui of China tried for a snatch of 146kg.

Jia, 24 and also a youth world champion back in 2013, built a lead of 6kg in the snatch but struggled to hold on to first place.

He did it when Nguyen Tran Anh Tuan of Vietnam and Ricko Saputra of Indonesia both missed chances to overtake him with their final attempts.

Jia made 140-146-296, while silver went to Tran Anh Tuan on 134-161-295 and bronze to 22-year-old Saputra, making his first appearance as a senior, on 133-158-291.

Arguably the most remarkable performance came in the B Group when Aniq Kasdan of Malaysia set an Asian junior record with a 160kg clean and jerk, a personal best by 18kg that gave him fourth place on total and a silver medal in clean and jerk.

When Kasdan, 20, won the Commonwealth Games gold in July, in Birmingham, his best clean and jerk was 142kg and his total was 24kg lower than today.

Lai Gia Thanh won Vietnam's second title of the weekend in the men’s 55kg, a high-quality and competitive session in which the world champion Arli Chontey of Kazakhstan finished second and Mansour Al Saleem of Saudi Arabia third.

In May, Gia Thanh had ben cheered on by 20 family members including his 85-year-old grandmother when, in his first competition in three years, he won the Southeast Asian Games title in Hanoi, his home nation’s capital city.

In Manama most of the crowd’s support was for Al Saleem, who was 1kg behind Gia Thanh in the snatch and 3kg behind by the finish on 119-140-259.

Three years ago Al Saleem, 34, had become the first Saudi athlete to win a continental title and last year he led after the snatch at the IWF World Championships, but he bombed out in the clean and jerk as Chontey took the title.

Chontey, 30, failed with only one of his lifts and made 116-144-260, while Gia Thanh, 24, missed his final two clean and jerks in making 120-142-262.

The winning totals for the Pan American and European champions this year, at both 55kg and 61kg, would not have made the podium in Bahrain - showing once more the strength of Asian lifters in the lighter men’s categories.