Sport

Liu sets three World records

BEIJING: Liu Chunhong of China won the women’s 69kg weightlifting gold medal in World record-breaking fashion at the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday.

The defending Olympic champion, who was made to switch sports from judo because she was considered too short, hoisted 128kg in the snatch and added 158kg in the clean and jerk for a total lift of 286kg, all three being new World records.

She twice reset the snatch World record with 125kg and 128kg efforts, erasing the 22-month-old standard of 123kg held by Russia’s Oxana Slivenko.

Her second clean and jerk effort of 149kg reset the World record for the total lift in her weight class to 277kg, a kilogramme better than Slivenko’s 11-month-old record.

Liu then converted her final clean and jerk attempt of 158kg to erase Russian Zarema Kasaeva’s November 2005 World record of 157kg.

The effort also bettered Liu’s World total lift record achieved just minutes earlier. Slivenko had no reply on Wednesday, managing 115kg in the snatch and 140kg in the clean and jerk for 255kg total, good only for the silver medal.

Ukrainian Natalya Davydova won the bronze medal with a total lift of 250kg.

Liu, a native of Shandong, had aspired as a child to become a judoka, spending five months at a sports school training with a judo team. But she switched to weights because according to the official Chinese press the 1.6-metre (five foot three-inch) girl was thought to be too short for the combat sport.

Days before the Beijing Olympics began, she was seen running around the athletes’ weightlifting training gym here in a special sweat-inducing track suit after her coach told her she was too “fat”.

“What I care about most is to do my best,” she said. “As long as I do so, I will have nothing to regret. I never give up. You have to always work hard in order to win.”

She realised her full potential in Athens, setting all three Olympic records in the 69kg class (122kg snatch, 152kg clean and jerk, and 275kg total) on her way to winning her first Olympic gold medal.

She also won the World championship in 2003 and 2005, but settled for the silver medal behind Slivenko at last year’s World championships.

Meanwhile, Sa Jae-hyouk of South Korea stopped China’s gold rush by edging out home crowd favourite Li Hongli to win the men’s 77kg division title on Wednesday.

Sa and Li both lifted a total of 366kg, but Sa got the gold because of a lower body weight. Armenia’s Gevorg Davtyan took the bronze, totalling 360kg in the two events.

China had previously won all six of the weight categories in which it had participated.

Sa was 3kg behind Li after lifting 163kg in the snatch, but stunned the Chinese crowd by heaving 203kg in his second clean and jerk.

It was South Korea’s first gold in the weightlifting competition. Sa added 8kg to the bar in an attempt to break the World record in his final clean and jerk, but gave up halfway through the lift.

Li cruised through the snatch but struggled in the second event. Nervous murmurs filled the arena when he missed a clean and jerk of 198kg.

He almost botched his final attempt, too, but the loud roar from the crowd seemed to help him gather extra strength. — Agencies