Vaughn looked like no time passed at all
Sometimes it takes time away from something you love to realize what it means to you. Or so it seemed for two-time Olympian Chad Vaughn (Florence, Texas) who spent more than a year away from major competition after the Beijing Olympic Games.
Vaughn looked like no time passed at all when he won his third title at the KeepOurTanker.com American Open in Mobile.
Vaughn’s lifts totaled 317kg in his 77kg division – just five kilograms away from his results at the 2008 Pan American Championships.
“I love weightlifting and I really have learned in this past year how much I’ve taken it for granted before and I just feel fortunate that I’m able to continue doing what I do and that I’ve even gotten back to the level that I’m at right now,” said Vaughn who is now the father of a three-month-old daughter. “It’s been an adjustment because up until Beijing and the 10 years before that it was all about weightlifting and, with the new baby, it’s not the #1 priority anymore.”
While some would say that not focusing 100% of your efforts on training would be detrimental in sports, Vaughn said his life as a father has been beneficial for his lifting.
“My whole career I’ve been too hard on myself and I’ve probably pushed too hard to the point where I probably push myself backwards sometimes,” Vaughn said. “I got married at the end of 2005 and I thought it was a good kind of distraction because it helped me take a little bit of that away and it helped me raise back up a little bit and it’s been even more so when we had that baby.”
(by Nicole Jomantas , usaweightlifting.org)