Kiwi Olympians: Olivia Baker

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Steel grilles shield windows of shattered glass, head-sized holes puncture the ceiling and water seeps across the floor.

The tiny, dank room is the second home of Olivia Baker, our first woman of Olympic weightlifting.

Twice a day, Baker comes to this concrete-block hut on the edge of Porirua's Maraeroa Marae to hoist the equivalent of an All Black front-row prop above her head.

The dilapidation is far removed from the image of Olympic glamour and prosperity. But 20-year-old Baker - a big woman with an even bigger heart - is happy here.

Well, there is no argument that it's better than where she trained before - in her family's car shed just along the street in the Porirua suburb of Waitangirua.

Or before that, inside a steel-fronted cage in a corner of the Aotea College gym, where the weights would smash dents in the wall when she dropped them and they rolled. So Baker and her weightlifting family moved into her parents' garage.

"But only one person could lift at a time, so everyone else sat outside and watched," she laughed.

"This is like a stadium compared to that. But it's still not big enough."

The athletes she trains with could also do with some new gear.

A lot of the weights are broken - and they have only one set.

Yet some of the country's top lifters are emerging from this underprivileged setting.

All five who train in Porirua are national champions - four of them happen to be from the same family.

Baker's 17-year-old brother, Heinz, is the New Zealand and Oceania junior champion. Her teenage cousins Sharleah and Jamie Baker both hold national secondary school titles.

"The only person in my family we can't persuade to do weightlifting is my 15-year-old sister. We've tried, but it's no use," Baker said.

Even her Samoan parents are hooked. Dad Andy is a referee, while mum Hope is "our No 1 supporter."

Baker started it. As a kid she was a promising thrower and she was encouraged to go and see the school's guidance counsellor - and weightlifting coach - Garry Marshall to build up her strength.

"But when I competed in my first weightlifting event, that was it. I liked it much better than athletics," she said.

"I don't understand why, because it just hurt so much every time I trained - my muscles ached so badly.

"But I loved the atmosphere. And I was at the top straight away."

That first competition was the national secondary school championships, where she won silver. Well, there were only two girls in her open-weight division.

Marshall remembers only too well how much Baker hated coming second.

"There's only twice in her career where she would tell you she has failed," he said. "Only once has she been defeated by a New Zealander, and that was at that first competition.

"She came away from that vowing she didn't like coming second and that girl would never beat her again. And she didn't.

"She repeated that three years later at her first senior Oceania champs. She was second to an Australian and that's never happened again. She is a very determined lass."

Some of that tenacity has grown through an intense rivalry with her not-so-little brother. Giant Heinz started lifting soon after his sister and, she says, it was "head-to-head."

"Now he's gone way past me in what he lifts, so I've given up," she says. "But he's still always giving me a hard time.

"I just remind him, 'Hey, I'm the one going to the Olympics'."

But Heinz will be there in Sydney, as will the rest of the Baker family, among the crowd at the Exhibition Hall in Darling Harbour. Despite the rivalry, he is really proud of his big sister.

They share a goal of making the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Olivia Baker will be part of the first Olympic appearance of women's weightlifting.

"My parents knew that I was strong when I was a baby - I used to lift stuff around - but they didn't think I'd end up a weightlifter. There just weren't any women lifters then," she says.

"Even now, it's pretty new to New Zealand, and the world."

But the kids at Glenview School know all about it. They have a fan club for "Auntie O," who works there part-time as a teacher's aide.

She looks after special-needs children - one is her nephew - and helps to take care of two very active 4-year-olds at Barnardos. It can double as training for Baker, whose hoisting skills are always in demand.

"They all want to be lifted all the time - it's a bit of a game," she says.

"They just tire me out. I'm just running around the whole time. But I love it. Maybe after the Olympics I'll go to teachers' college or something."

But a year ago Baker could not lift her little fans, let alone 125kg of lead.

She stopped serious training for six months after a searing pain spread through her lower back.

A specialist told her it was a gradual injury which had built up over three years; it simply needed rest. With her dream of the Olympics driving her, she did what the doctor ordered, even though the frustration almost drove her mad.

Then, days before her return to the competition platform, she tripped down the stairs at home and broke a foot. It meant she had to miss her last shot at the junior world championships - her final chance to improve on the bronze medal she won in 1997.

Since entering the senior world of weightlifting, Baker has always been ranked in the world's top 20. She is No 1 in Oceania, and is confident that she will be seeded in the top 10 for the Games.

She is now lifting a total of 225kg - 100kg in the snatch and 125kg in the clean and jerk. That's like lifting All Black prop Kees Meeuws over your head.

Chinese world champion Miuyan Ding has a best total of 285kg. But Baker says the one to beat is Agata Wrobel, the Polish junior world champion. "She's snatching my clean and jerk."

Baker is unfazed by the numbers - she just keeps lifting more. She is at the marae at 6 am every week-day for a couple of hours of heaving and sweating, before a second session at four in the afternoon.

"It's really hard because I love my sleep. I have to have two alarm clocks to wake me up in the morning."

To be ready for Sydney in eight weeks' time, she also has the enviable task of having to eat more.

"I have to put on more weight. I do my best lifting at 105kg - that's when I'm at my strongest - and at the moment I'm only 94kg."

No time to lose - it's off to the fridge.

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