Chapter Nine: My first ‘Green & Gold’ – at the World Championships in Athens
Well it wasn’t really green and gold… Rather, it was navy blue with bits of green, yellow and white. But nevertheless it was my first time representing my country (when I’d previously competed in Powerlifting I was representing my temporary home, Great Britain) and so I felt really proud when I received my team gear. I remember being in the gym one afternoon when all our stuff for the World Championships arrived: tracksuit, lifting suit, t-shirts, shirts, a bag and a fleecy top (which was one of my all time favourite items until I burnt it on a hot plate a few years later). I was so excited! I didn’t realise at the time, but it was unusual to receive such a large amount of stuff and was thanks to our official sponsor at the time, Telstra. Later on when we lost Telstra as a sponsor, this was a real ‘luxury’ we were deprived of.
Arriving at my first World Weightlifting Championships in Athens, Greece, really opened my eyes. It was a huge event, held over 8 days, with a record number of competitors and countries involved all going flat out to qualify for the Olympics the next year. Just watching the weights being thrown around in the training hall before the competition started was incredible. Then the competition started and I was blown away!
According to how well a country’s team performed determined how many points the country earned, which then determined how many lifters they could have at the Olympics next year. This is why there were so many lifters. Every country had a full team there and they were going all out.
Although I was there with the best in Australia I soon realised we were really far behind the leading weightlifting countries of the world, such as China and Bulgaria. I didn’t let this deter me though and when it was my turn on the competition platform, I still went out there and did my best. This was the first time ever that I experienced this being “in the zone” that people talk about. It was incredible! I was sitting on a chair during the competition, after I had warmed up, waiting for my turn to be called out on the platform for my lifts and was staring at the floor completely “in the zone”. It felt like such a buzz, I was so psyched. Even a little hiccup like having to wait for 10 or more attempts in between my lifts, thanks to the number of lifters who were all taking the same weight as me, didn’t phase me.
Luke didn’t coach me for this competition. He was in Athens as the Head Coach for the Men’s team so was watching me from the audience. Jack & Mike were coaching the Women’s team so they were my coaches in the warm up room and had been coaching me in the training hall in the few days leading up to my competition day, so they would get to know me. I’m sure Luke had also fully briefed them both before hand on what made me tick and the signals or words I needed to hear, to get me to perform at my best. It’s little things that matter at these times, like what the hell did Jack mean when he said “reach”, when I was used to hearing Luke say “finish the pull”?
I ended up placing 24th out of 43 lifters in my weight class, which might sound bad, but I finished with a PB total (177.5kg) and 4 Australian records, breaking the Clean and Jerk and Total twice. I was over the moon that I managed to get 100kg Clean & Jerk in this competition (an Australian record). Best of all, Luke was really proud of my performance, especially as I was the only one on the whole Australian team who did a PB or broke any records.
I was very professional, (even if I may say so myself) taking example from Michelle who really took me under her wing. I went to bed early most nights, since I was suffering from jet lag, mostly staying in my room with my room-mate, Simone, watching Greek TV, reading or watching the competition on EuroSport. I ate really healthy too, not that there was any junk food available where we were staying. Though unfortunately, a day after my competition I came down with a really bad cold, which on top of the jet lag made me really tired. There wasn’t really a lot to do around the hotel anyway other than hang out with other team members. Our hotel was slightly out of town, I’m not really sure where – I was so focussed on the competition I wasn’t really paying much attention as our bus drove us from the airport to the hotel. This meant that in our down-time, there wasn’t anywhere we could go within walking distance, even if we wanted to.
Most people imagine an athlete’s life as being fairly glamorous with all the travelling, but it really isn’t. Yes, we have great experiences and get to see some interesting places you may not otherwise choose to go to. However, most of our time abroad or travelling is spent training, in hotel rooms recovering, competing or watching our fellow teammates compete, with very little time for sight-seeing, especially when you have to rush back home to go back to work to pay the bills! After my competition I managed to get out for one day with a few of the others from our team, to do some sight-seeing. I was really glad we had enough spare time to head into Athens to visit the Acropolis. Seeing the ancient citadel really blew me away, standing amongst the ruins I had read about in history books as I was growing up. The oldest buildings we have in Australia are only around 200 years old so standing among buildings like the Parthenon which dates back to 447 BC is quite hard to fathom! After our little tour we also found a little cafe in town and mingled with some locals having coffee. I discovered the greek coffee wasn’t quite to my liking, I much preferred our coffee in Australia!
I missed my fiance, Steve, a lot that trip as it was my first really big trip away from him. I was away in total for 3 weeks, as I did a quick detour to England before coming home, so I could see my ageing grandmother. My mobile phone bill that trip was astronomical and I soon gained a reputation for always being on the phone, checking in with Steve whenever I was away. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me, he just doesn’t do too well when he is on his own. He has no family in Sydney (since he immigrated from England), most of our friends are married, or busy themselves, so he’d end up moping around the house on his own.
In Athens, when I wasn’t calling Steve or hanging in my hotel room, I got to know the rest of the team. We had a huge team, again thanks to our sponsor, Telstra. We had two masseurs (Steve Tikkanen worked on the Men’s team and Debbie from WA on the Women), a team doctor (Donald Kuah from NSW), 4 coaches (Luke plus Martin Leech for the Men’s team and Jack and Mike for the Women’s team) and one team manager (Robert Kabbas, silver medalist from the 1984 LA Olympics). This was on top of all the weightlifters. We would all sit together in the audience watching the competitions each day and would have our meals in the hotel restaurant at the same time. It was great getting to know the others from the other states. We all got along well and were working together; usually we were all against each other when we were competing at nationals.
I had met most of the girls before, at our training camp at the AIS, although this was the first time I met Jay Saxton, as she had temporarily been living in England with her husband.
I also met some of the elite male lifters for the first time, such as Damien Brown, Craig Blythman, Harvey Goodman, Yourik Sarkisian, Sergo Chakoyen and Kiril Kounev. I figured their personalities out pretty quickly. People used to often ask me how the women weightlifters are treated by the men, as weightlifting has traditionally been a male dominated sport. I can honestly say they were all genuinely friendly and I never at any time felt less important than them. In fact they have all been encouraging and complimentary, treating us like equals. I can even remember Yourik bragging to a couple of his Armenian friends about how I had Clean and Jerked 100kg at 58 kg bodyweight and they all gave me credit (perhaps they were being polite?). Harvey was very friendly and inquisitive asking me lots of questions about myself, while telling me all about his little girl and her toilet training habits which he was missing out on. Harvey was a seasoned lifter who had been around for a long time and suffered many injuries. He had also recently come off a two year ban for testing positive. He announced his retirement shortly after this trip. Damien was friendly enough and had also been around a while but while he was a ‘nice’ guy, someone told me he always had his own best interests at heart. Craig was very quiet and also nice, generally keeping to himself. Both Sergo and Kiril were friendly but very quiet too. I wasn’t sure if it was due to having a limited knowledge of the English language or whether they really were just quiet guys, but I liked them both anyway. Both were what we referred to as “imports” – Sergo from Armenia and Kiril from Bulgaria. Neither resided in Australia at the time, but had both obtained Australian passports, along with a few other ‘imports’, to lift for Australia and supposedly help lift our standards. Some of us thought though that it would be hard for other Australians to learn from their talent when they trained most of the year in their original home country. As for Yourik, he did live in Australia with his wife and children, was very talkative and I soon learnt he loved being the centre of attention. He was also very helpful and although he has been a world champion and world record holder and has been around many years, he would bend over backwards to help anyone. He was very genuine and passionate with the advice he offered, to the point where it would drive people crazy!
Aside from the lifters, I also got to know some of the team officials on this trip. Whilst the coaches tended to keep to themselves and were usually busy off coaching or strategising, I had a few good conversations with the others. Obviously I already knew Steve Tikkanen quite well from Burwood. Debbie was fun and we had a good laugh. Robert Kabbas was a great team manager, very organised and to this day it sticks in my mind him telling me he believed I had a 200kg total in me. I really hoped so and decided to aim for this… unfortunately not all dreams come true.
Coming up next – Chapter 10: The build up to Olympic Team selections