Weightlifting: Soffe is having a ball carrying that weight

There are two things you notice when you first meet Keisha-Dean Soffe, the New Zealand weightlifter competing in the women's open division - firstly, she is not built like a netballer and, secondly, she may have the world's biggest ball of used tape.

The netball reference is because 23-year-old Soffe got into weightlifting because she wanted to be a Silver Fern. The tape ball is about 1kg in weight, roughly the size of a shot put and consists of all the bits of tape that Soffe has used to bind hands, fingers, thumbs and knees during the last six months of build-up to the Commonwealth Games.

"It's funny," she said with a laugh that persuades you, even on short acquaintance, that Soffe's sunny disposition allows her to find much that is funny.

"I started this about six months ago and add to it all the time. It's really to remind me of all the work, all the hard yards, I have put in so far. I keep it with me all the time but it does give Customs guys a headache," Soffe said.

She laughs again. "They always think I'm carrying drugs, bring it out and want to cut it open."

In spite of the Customs difficulties, Soffe's kept her tape ball and it will be in close proximity when she begins competing in the open division (over 75kg) on Wednesday.

This Waitara woman is a medal chance not just because she's ranked fourth in the Commonwealth but because of her sunny disposition, covered this time by a steelier resolve, aided by confidence-boosting training in Samoa.

The resolve stems back to Waitara High School where she dreamed of being a Silver Fern. "I wasn't always this big and read somewhere that the Silver Ferns did circuit training. I went down to our sports centre and asked if I could do it.

"He said: 'Why not try weightlifting?' I said: 'Nah, I want to play netball.' Anyway, he kept telling me I had to try weightlifting before I could do netball. I didn't like it but did it so I could play netball. Then he got the Taranaki weightlifting coach involved but I still didn't like it. Then, about three or four months later, I found I was enjoying it."

That coordinator's visionary intervention - "I still want to be a Silver Fern," said Soffe wistfully, "but I know it isn't going to happen" - has led all the way to Melbourne via Manchester and Samoa.

Manchester 2002 saw a 19-year-old Soffe finish fifth in her division. "It was a bit new to me," she said. "I was just amazed to be in the Games, in the same team as some of my heroes - like Sarah Ulmer. It was just a buzz. On the plane I sat next to Leilani Joyce and it was great."

But her head being on a swivel as she took in all that was happening was also distracting and, she said, all jollity lost for a moment, that she won't be distracted this time. Ranked fourth in the Commonwealth, she has not long concluded five weeks' training at a state-of-the-art weightlifting centre built in Samoa to help the rise of Pacific Islands weightlifting.

"That facility is way, way better than anything we have in New Zealand," she said. "And most of the top girls in the Commonwealth were all training there. It was wicked - training was like competing in that you didn't want to get left behind what the other girls were doing. So it was pretty full-on and I found I really benefited from that."

She rates the Indians and lifters from Niue, Fiji and Tonga as threats - another sign of the improvement in Island weightlifting.

"We're closely bunched together and anyone in that top five could break through and win," she said.

She wound another string of tape onto her tape ball. If Keisha-Dean Soffe wins a medal at Melbourne, that ball will be as much of a trophy as any medal.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY