The latest issue of the South American Federation Magazine is out
The sixth issue of the South American Federations Magazine is out and available online in Spanish language. Click here to read
IWF Fulfils Final Criteria For Confirmation On Paris 2024 Sports Programme
The International Weightlifting Federation has completed that last outstanding criteria required for the IOC’s March 2019 decision, lifting the conditional status of weightlifting’s place on the Paris 2024 sports programme, to be enforced. The IOC’s March decision was based on a comprehensive series of measures established and implemented by the IWF in recent years, all aimed at protecting clean athletes and promoting clean sport. The final measure to be put in place was a contract with the International Testing Agency (ITA) that extends an agreement already put in place between the IWF and ITA in November 2018, with responsibility for a number of anti-doping areas being transferred to the ITA. “Taken together, we are certain that the measures the IWF has put in place will contribute to sustained culture change for our sport. We are very happy that the latest steps the IWF has taken mean our athletes can train for an Olympic future with much greater certainty,” said IWF Director General Attila Adamfi. Weightlifting is one of the handful of sports to have already featured on the sports programme of the first edition of the modern Olympic Games in 1896. The sport has recently known a popular resurgence among the general public, thanks to the increasing popularity of functional fitness and the proliferation of lifting platforms in gyms around the world. “We are very much looking forward to having weightlifters join us in Paris in 2024,” said Paris 2024 Director General Etienne Thobois. “We had already been planning on having great competitions for weightlifting, and the certainty of their place on the programme now allows us to plan more effectively, in just the same way as it allows weightlifters to train with the proper focus.” The improvements made by the IWF are the result of a wide-ranging team effort involving the World Anti-Doping Agency, national anti-doping agencies, independent experts, educators and the International Olympic Committee. "We’ve been working particularly closely with the IWF, specifically on the issue of clean sport and we’ve seen the IWF implementing concrete measures to ensure a sustainable change in favour of clean weightlifting, not least thanks to a newly designed Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 qualification system, which links the number of quota available per country to their history of doping to explicitly reward clean sport” said IOC Sports Director Kit
The Arafura Games successfully concluded
The Weightlifting event at the 12th Arafura Games held in Darwin (AUS), concluded with many Oceania records broken along the way. The weightlifting event held at the new Darwin Convention Centre from the 27th to 29th April produced some excellent results with a packed house every session. Seventeen countries took part in the event. At the games, six different sports were conducted at the same time – in different halls – which indicates just how large the Darwin Convention Centre is, perfectly suitable for international level competitions. Some of the highlights were the battles in the men session in the 67kg and 96kg categories. In the women sessions, we saw tight battles in the 59kg, 76kg, 81kg and +87kg categories. The weightlifting event at the Arafura Games was honoured by the attendance of the IWF General Secretary, Mohammed Jaloud and the IWF Vice President, Nicu Vlad. Both gentlemen stayed for the full duration of the tournament. See the results of the event here. Source:
U.S. Olympic Committee announces Best of April honors for Team USA Awards presented by Dow
Standout performances during April earned weightlifter CJ Cummings, surfer Caroline Marks and the U.S. Women’s World Championship Ice Hockey Team Best of April honours for the Team USA Awards presented by Dow, the United States Olympic Committee announced today. Cummings swept gold and set 15 records – three junior worlds, three junior and three senior Pan American, and three junior and three senior American records – at the Pan American Championships in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Cummings went a perfect six for six in his attempts, Snatched a meet-best 153 kg, and had a meet-best Clean and Jerk of 191 kg. His 344 kg Total was enough to crown him Pan American champion, and he was named Best Male Lifter in the competition. About the Team USA Awards Each National Governing Body may nominate one female, one male and one team per discipline. An internal nominating committee selects five nominees from both the male and female categories, and three from the team category to advance to the voting round. Votes received from NGB representatives and select members of the media account for 50 percent of the final tally, with the other half determined by online fan voting via TeamUSA.org/Awards. Source: Team
IWF and ITA Sign Anti-Doping Partnership
An agreement between the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) and the International Testing Agency (ITA) was signed earlier today during the SportAccord convention in Gold Coast. The agreement builds on one already signed in November 2018. Until now, the partnership between the two organisations included detailed risk assessment, test distribution planning and management, out of competition testing, Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) management, and support with regard to the IWF’s education programmes. In-competition testing, management of the IWF Athlete Biological Passport programme, result management, and long-term storage and re-analysis of samples have now been added. The partnership is further evidence of the IWF’s clear and considerable commitment to protecting clean athletes and promoting clean sport. It builds on several years of consistent improvements on the part of the IWF and its member federations, achieved with the support of the Clean Sport Commission, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Olympic Committee and others. “The IWF is already widely considered to be at the forefront of anti-doping efforts in sport, thanks to its efforts and innovations in testing, Olympic qualifying, education and more,” said ITA Director General Benjamin Cohen. “We are grateful for the opportunity to add to these efforts and innovations with the ITA’s expertise. I am confident that our partnership will deliver for clean weightlifting all around the world.” “Ensuring clean competition and a culture of clean sport requires a great team. The IWF is very happy to have the ITA alongside us and enhance our existing partnership” said IWF Director General Attila Adamfi. “The IWF is rightly proud of its efforts to ensure clean sport and we look forward to having the ITA help extend those
Tokyo 2020 vision – Morghan King
Trailblazing American weightlifter and Tokyo 2020 medal hopeful Morghan King talks to Sam Price about being a woman in a sport that has historically been dominated by men, and how she wants to promote body positivity to the next generation of female athletes. It's never too late to find the right sport: just ask Morghan King. A successful college football scholar with a background in gymnastics and athletics, King completed marathons and triathlons after graduating with a qualification in graphic design, but it wasn't until she lifted weights for the first time, at the age of 26, that she found her true calling. In 2013, the same year she decided to pursue the sport professionally, she won the US national championships in her category and qualified for the IWF World Championships in Wroclaw (Poland). Less than three years later she was on her way to the Olympic Games Rio 2016, where she made history, snatching 83kg to break a 16-year American record set by pioneering Olympic gold medallist Tara Knott. King's record-breaking snatch would have been enough for gold in the 48kg competition at Sydney 2000 - the first-ever women's weightlifting event in the history of the Games - but the woman's side of the sport has developed so rapidly in the intervening period that it meant she only finished sixth in Rio. Still, it completed a remarkable four-year progression from complete beginner to someone who could lift more than twice her weight class set to favour King, a coveted place on the podium looks within reach should she arrive at Tokyo 2020 fit and healthy. The 33-year-old is working hard to achieve this goal alongside her coach and fiancé Dean Kruse but says she doesn't need an Olympic medal to define her, and is already using her status to break down gender-based stereotypes about weightlifting and inspire the next generation of female athletes to practise the sport. She explains: "After Rio 2016, my friend [US lifter Holley Mangold], who is also an Olympian, said to me: 'I hope you realise, because of social media and the reach we now have in weightlifting, how many young girls you've inspired'. Before that it hadn't really occurred to me, but after hearing that I wanted to share the excitement [of the Games]." This sense of duty took King to the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) Buenos Aires 2018 as an Athlete Role Model, where she enjoyed passing on her experience to future stars of her sport - particularly those competing in the women's events. "In Buenos Aires, my volunteer - who translated everything for me! - asked a Peruvian athlete [Gianella Valdiviezo] how she got into weightlifting", King recalls. "She said that she had found me on Instagram, and was so inspired by what I was doing that she wanted to start working hard to get to [the YOG]. "I think that's so powerful because as athletes we get so focused on ourselves that we forget how inspiring we are to other people." King has more than 70,000 followers on Instagram where, like many professional sportspeople, she interacts with fans and provides an insight into her life as an elite athlete. Competing in such an individual sport can be lonely - particularly weightlifting, where the movements are respective and the improvements incremental - but King believes that social media can help to negate that sense of isolation and if used honestly rather than idealistically, can be a tool for good. "We're in this alone, but [social media] takes away from that feeling of 'I'm all by myself' ", explains King, who acknowledges that Tokyo 2020 will be her final Games due to the rigorous of the sport and the impact it can have on personal relationships. " I've always wanted to be able to inspire young girls and their mothers, so that was important for me when I started getting into the public eye. I do want to be that role model and I want people from all ages to look up to me. If you're projecting somebody else on social media then you're going to start fighting that, so be yourself, enjoy your journey and share it with people+. In particular, King is determined to promote female body positivity to counter prejudices about a sport that was long seen as a pursuit only suitable for men. Attitudes are now changing, helped by increased funding and sponsorship for female lifters, the rise in popularity of CrossFit (the form of high-intensity training that introduced King to the sport) and feminist campaigns like the viral #LiftLikeAGirl hashtag, with King excited to be part of this growing movement. " I think it'really powerful and inspiring to promote positive body images to women", says the Seattle native, who herself stands at just 1.53m tall. "Strenght sports have kind of got a bad reputation, like 'We're bodybuilders, and we're going to get really big'. But it's not like that at all, and I think with their reach that we're starting to get we're going to be able to inspire more young girls. We've got so many women that are already involved that I'm hoping [the sport] will just continue to grow and grow, and becomes more normalised rather than something to be scared of." For King, there is something empowering about lifting weights, and she wants more young women to feel the same sensation that she does when competing. "I love the perfection of [weightlifting], love that it's always me against the bar," she adds. "For me, there's something about touching that iron. When you touch it there's incredible power that you feel; not only the only you're projecting on the outside, but on the inside, you feel as if you can do anything. I think that is just an incredible feeling, and I hope that women will start to see that." It's not just the next wave of professional weightlifters that King wants to inspire, either. When done in sensible measures with the right technique, weightlifting is proven to have myriad benefits that can help athletes from a range of disciplines, with US Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin just one example of a superstar female athlete from a different sport using it in her training regimen. "You can use weightlifting with any sport; it doesn't just have to be the sport of weightlifting", explains King, who wants to study sports psychology and become a coach after she retires. "I think it's really important to make sure women know not to be scared of the bar, or scared of the weights. It's going to make you stronger and more powerful. I would really like to spread weightlifting through other sports because it can benefit you in everything," she continues. "I think that's what I was missing when I played college football because we didn't do strength work. Looking back, I can only imagine the athlete I would have been if I had that background." Never mind the footballer shoe could have been; King is a phenomenal athlete in her own right, and a shining example of what can be achieved in a short space of time with talent, strong work ethic and a good support network. But even more impressive than her rise through the weightlifting ranks to become, pound-for-pound, one of the strongest women in the world is how wholeheartedly she is embracing her mission to shatter gender stereotypes and inspire young women. With King among a growing number of strong, powerful female athlete role models across the Olympic Movement, the future of the sport has never been brighter - and never more female. Source: Olympic Review, Sam Price
