Weightlifing: Women easy with weight of expectation

Commonwealth Games bound weight lifter Kate Howard during training. Photo / Greg Bowker

New Zealand women have won weightlifting medals at the last two Commonwealth Games.

They were allowed into the competition at Manchester in 2002, and Olivia Baker obliged with a silver and bronze in the 75kg class.

Four years on, Keisha Dean-Soffe bagged a bronze in the same division in Melbourne.

This time, New Zealand have two women in their team of seven for New Delhi, Kate Howard in the 53kg class and Tracey Lambrechs in the 75kg.

So there's a degree of expectation the medal success will be maintained in October. It will be Lambrechs' first Games; but Howard is an old hand, preparing for her third.

Had life taken a different turn, Howard, born in Caerphilly, Wales, might now be an oceanographer.

Instead, while doing her degree at Southampton University in 2000, she took a gym instruction course to raise some extra money. Part of it involved weightlifting, without as she put it "getting into the nitty gritty". She wanted to learn more, had friends with an interest in it, started tagging along and within two years was lifting for Wales at the Commonwealth Games.

She finished fourth in what was her first international competition, but a disappointing effort at Melbourne four years later left her disillusioned. It was time for a break, and that coincided with moving to New Zealand.

"This was an area of the world I wanted to live in and for me it was always New Zealand because of the attitude of the people," she said.

In 2007 she arrived and headed for the Millennium Institute on the North Shore to catch up with some old adversaries. The bug bit again.

Fast forward to last month and the qualifying deadline for New Delhi was nine days away. Howard needed a combined 153kg in a competition at the Millennium to qualify.

"Everybody was training really hard and it was quite an emotional time. For me it was a case of giving it one last try, now or never."

Howard snatched 68kg, a national record, meaning she had to clean and jerk 85kg to qualify. Twice she tried, twice she failed. One chance left.

"I sat in the warm-up room knowing I'd done it in training once, knowing I was capable of it."

At the third attempt she lifted the weight triumphantly. Relief, and delight. She's since done the standard twice more. Howard holds the clean and jerk national record at 85kg and has the national marks at 58kg too.

She thinks deeply about her sport, and if weightlifting wants a voice to eloquently explain its appeal they could do much worse than listen to Howard.

"There's the instantaneous sense of achievement, where you've failed a weight then go back to it and achieve it.

"The sport itself is quite emotional. It's all about failure in some ways.

"You push and push yourself, put more weight on the bar until you get to the point where your brain tells you it doesn't think you can do it, or your body simply can't do it.

"It's that roller-coaster of emotions, when you're frustrated and failed and come back a week or month later and do something you never thought possible. It's quite an amazing feeling."

She is constantly striving for the perfect lift. "Ten years later I'm still looking for it, so I'm hoping it happens on October 5."

That's when Howard steps on to the mat in the Jawaharlal Nehru sports complex in New Delhi. She'll make the most of it. She figures, at 30, it's time to focus her energies into other aspects of life.

She is self-employed as an online programmer for British and New Zealand companies running instruction courses for budding fitness trainers.

"I've been putting weightlifting first for so long you come to a point where other things need to take priority."

UNDER THE BAR
New Zealand will send a team of seven lifters to the Commonwealth Games in October.
* Kate Howard (under 53kg)
* Tracey Lambrechs (over 75kg)
* Lou Guinares (under 56kg)
* Mark Spooner (under 69kg)
* Richard Paterson (under 85kg)
* Stanislav Chalaev (under 105kg)
* Cameron Sinclair (under 62kg)
There will be eight men's and seven women's divisions in New Delhi.