Lift 'n' Toss

Pitkämäki ties the season score with Thorkildsen

2009-06-20T14:38:00.005+03:00

The first golden league game of the season was held in Berlin, and as usually, not much field events are there. I really don't understand, why the IAAF wants to to put events – and therefore the athletes – in different categories. They all train hard and have the same goal, but depending on the event one takes part in, predeterminetas ones incomes and competition one can take part in.

So the men javelin is the only throwing event in the golden league. Fortunately we can see many battles between the top javelin throwers and once again it seems to be head to head battle between Tero Pitkämäki and Andreas Thorkildsen. The competition started pretty even when Tero started with 85.39 and the Norse responded with 85.48 and took the lead after start. That was also the best performace for Andreas but the Finn bested for 86.53 and took a grap for the million dollar reward.

It was known before the competition, that the surface of the arena is very difficult for the throwers; they can't get good grip from the rough surface and it's very difficult for the athlete if they can't trust that their backing foot will hold. Andreas, and especially season top throw holder, Vadims Vasilevskis, were struggling with grip and didn't perform as well as expected. This might concern them since the world championships are held this year in the same arena.

1) Tero Pitkämäki Suomi 86,53 (kkk)
2) Andreas Thorkildsen Norja 85,48
3) Igor Janik Puola 83,52
4) Mark Frank Saksa 82,97
5) Vadims Vasilevskis Latvia 82,88
6) Teemu Wirkkala Suomi 82,34
7) Ainars Kovals Latvia 81,50
8) Matthias de Zordo Saksa 79,65
9) Antti Ruuskanen Suomi 77,31
10) Tero Järvenpää Suomi 76,36.

Throws update week 23

2009-06-08T11:08:00.003+03:00

Season opener 66,31 for Spotakova

Reigning olympic and world champion Barbora Spotakova showd that she is ready for the season. The Czech beat season leading mark owner and one of her toughest rival during the last years, Christina Obergföll, who wasn't able to provide as good performance as she did a couple of weeks back. These throwers will face eachothers many time this season and I'm expecting to see tough battles since I think we didn't see best from Christina this time.

Andreas Thorkildsen shows how it's done for the Finns

Keihään juhla competition was held in Seinäjoki but it wasn't a celebration for the Finnish throwers since Andreas was clearly in a league of his own throughout the competitin. His best throw was measured 88,97 and the Norwegian wasn't even satisfied in an interview:

" The result was a little bit suprising and especially in the way I did it. Now I need to look out, why I really didn't feel like 100 %. There is still things to work out and I hope I can work them out for Berlin."

Teemu Wirkkala was second with his record throw 84,68 and Tero Pitkämäki continued his struggle with technique tossing only 82,90. Young Ari Mannio showd that his good mark thrown in Leppävirta wasn't a coinsidense by getting a result 82,78.

Season top list thusfar:

 1. Vadim Vasilevski    LAT  90,71
2. Andreas Thorkildsen NOR  88,97
3. Ari Mannio          FIN  85,70
4. Teemu Wirkkala      FIN  84,68
5. Mark Frank          GER  83,86
6. Cyrus Hostetler     USA  83,16
7. Park Jae-Myong      KOR  83,10
8. Corey White         USA  82,97
9. Tero Pitkämäki      FIN  82,90
10. Eriks Rags         LAT  82,23

Malachowski and Wlodarczyk setting the marks in Janusz Kusocinski Memorial

For the joy of home crowds, it was the Polish to show best throws in Varsow. Anita Wlodarczyk won tough competition with a good result 75.21. Unfortunately competition was held before international broadcast so I didn't get to see it. Women's hammer is usually the first throwing event so it doesn't get much attention in broadcasts and oddly they didn't even show a compilation of it.

1 Anita Wlodarczyk POL 75.21

2 Martina Hrasnová SVK 73.12

3 Kathrin Klaas GER 70.20

4 Inna Sayenko UKR 66.74

5 Iryna Sekachova UKR 66.35

6 Malgorzata Zadura POL 64.69

7 Silvia Salis ITA 64.54

8 Katarzyna Kita POL 64.27

9 Malwina Sobierajska POL 61.90

Piotr Malachowski got a good victory over Virgilijus Alekna, who seems to be only a shadow of his past years appearances. The Pole did a constant performance with several throws over 65 meters. Although I expected a little more class from the competition as there were some big names, but it didn't show up for some reason. The throws were also not so impressive in the women's discus, so I guess it can be explained by the throwing circumstances.

1 Piotr Malachowski POL 65.98

2 Virgilijus Alekna LTU 63.93

3 Zoltán Kövágó HUN 62.22

4 Märt Israel EST 60.86

5 Konrad Szuster POL 60.75

6 Robert Urbanek POL 60.54

7 Jarred Rome USA 58.80

8 Przemyslaw Czajkowski POL 56.40

Quo Vadis, Nahla Ramadan?

2009-05-30T14:09:00.003+03:00

Disclaimer: The information on this blog entry is based on internet writings, doubtful recollections and pure assumptions. Therefore this is not a valid article and if you find false information or you just know better, please let me know. Due to my Arabic skills – well I don't even know the alphabets, let alone the actual language – it is pretty hard to collect some real data. E.g. I have no idea what happened to Nahla between 2005 and 2007.

21st of november 2003 was a big day for Egyptian weightlifting. After Shang Chichun of China was disqualified for a doping offense, just 18-year-old junior Nahla Ramadan was declared winner and thus Egypt got their first world championship gold medal in a long long time. Recording 117,5 kg in snatch (new junior world record), 145 kg in clean and jerk summing up to a total of 262,5 kilos which was too much for her rivals. A new weightlifting star was born.

As often with young athletes, the person behind succes was the players father, in this case, Nahla's dad Mohamed who was a former lifter himself with several national championships on his belt. He introduced Nahla and her sister Nagham in to the world of weightlifting at a young age, but only Nahla was the one making big succes and she got into national weightlifting team in 2001. She got a Bulgarian trainer Yurden Ivanov and moved to Ras Al-Bar's training center. Results of an professional type of training started to show soon as the next year Nahla took bronze medal in 69 kilo category before taking the gold in 75's in 2003.

In Egypt where they don't have much olympic athletes – especially women – Nahla become quite known and she was one of the county's olympic hopes in Athens. This can be very difficult situation for a young athlete when one has to cope with lots of pressure and everything comes so quickly. Then it happened; being a gold medal favourite, Nahla first underperformed in snatch and failed in all of her clean and jerk attempts. She just wasn't seasoned well enough to withstand attention of 70 million people.

The real troubles started after the Olympics when there were rumours that Qatar is trying to get her to join their nation. Qatar was known for recruiting athletes from poor countries with big money which naturally sound like a good offer for an ahtlete who is from simple Alexandrian circumstances. Nahla's 180 000 LE (~ 22 600 €) Meditereanean games reward money and other bonuses she got might sound big in Egyptian standards, but considering that she's an international level athlete, it is not that much. You really can't blame an athlete for thinking a decent incomes, but she turned the offer down at that time.

After another disappointing performance in year's main event in 2005, in which Nahla placed 5th, the situation culminated as Mohamed Ramadan said that Nahlan hasn't got what she deserved and tried to blackmail more money. He came to Nahla's training camp and took her away. Federations response to this was to ban Nahla for life in 2007, file a complaint to Egypt's Attorney General in order to prevent Nahla from traveling abroad and sue her to get back money they have used to prepare her since 2005. It seemed like her lifting career was over.

The situation cleared after few twist and turns in 2008 after Nahla and her father apologised their behavior and everything they've done. Whatever happened behind the curtains, the most important was that Nahla and her fellow sufferer Esmat Mansour El Sayed were eglible to compete again. Nahla was meant to take part in Eleiko GP, but you can't see her name on the score sheet. I hope that everything is ok with her and we can see her competing in the future.

Asian Weightlifting championships 9-15 May

2009-05-25T12:23:00.000+03:00

It was a bit difficult to keep eye on Asian champs since the news coverage was so small. It also seems, that the Asian nations don't apprectiate this competition really high since you didn't saw much olympic winners or top lifters on the stage; Cao Lei and Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon were the only Beijing winner to take part and ironically neither of them took the first position.

So not so much to mention. Iran took the firsti position before Kazakhstan and China. No new records were set.

Results

Top lists rearranged in javelin

2009-05-25T03:25:00.000+03:00

Athletics outdoor season is taking it first steps and it was a good weekend for javelin throwers.

Christina Obergföll showed that the German is fired up once again throwing 68,40 which tops Mariya Abakumovas old leading mark made in the Russian winter cup with almost three metres. The result was made in Halle, Germany.

In men reigning olympic champion Andreas Thorkhildsen was dropped third on the list as Vadims Vasilevskis threw 90,71 and Ari Mannio 85,70 respectively.

As said before, the season is just starting, but it most certainly looks like we are about to see tough competitions in javelin this year.

A few picks of promising lifters

2009-05-25T02:14:00.000+03:00

The first youth weightlifting championships has been competed in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Lifters born before 1.1.1992 were taking their first breath of world championship competitions and got a good look how international competitions are beeing held; lifting in the center of media attention can be very different to in local competition where they don't so much pressures and tough rivals.

As expected, China took the first position in women's team classification before Russians and the host, Thailand. In men Iran came first, then Russia again and China was left third.

In women it was three world records as OKUR Saziye won the women's 44 kilogram category with flying colours, made a new word record in snatch and came only four kilos short in total, WANG Li bested snatch record with three kilos as her way to three gold medals and DENG Wei made the boards clear in clean and jerk at 58's.

In men it was a bit more quite since LU Yuntao in 50 kilos division was the only one to be able to make new records. But also CHEN Xiong might be a name to remember since he dominated the next groub, 56 kg.

In international Eleiko women grand prix Abir Abdel Rahman Khalil, in the picture, made a staggering performance as she lifted 111 + 142 and took the first place in Sinclair before Norways Ruth Kasirye. The Ehyptian has still the whole year time to break youth world records set by Tatyana Kashirina (120+150).

Problems of underground sports

2009-05-12T19:56:00.000+03:00

The Internet has made life of sports fans a lot easier: before one was complitely in the mercies of news papers and magazines, which made it hard to find information about not so popular sports, and if one did turn up with something, it was most likely old and not much visual material— not to mention video coverage.

But it seems that not everyone is too keen in exploiting this possibility. I've been trying to keep my eye on Asian weightlifting championships for the last days, but the possibilities seem to be slim and none. What really suprices me, that Asian weightlifting federation doesn't provide results, information or media of any kind. C'mon guys, it isn't that hard to put some web sites up.

I have tried to ask in several web sites about this, but it seems to be that you can't get anything out unless you have some connections in federations or you go through Asian news sites. Funny thing that the host town doesn't mention anything about the competition and neither does the Kazahkstan's weightlifting federation. I'm having difficulties understanding those.

Anyhow, I believe that the competition is televised, so I hope seeing some broadcasts or summaries later. Until that, Kaldykorgan quiets up.

1	Anita Wlodarczyk	POL	75.21
2	Martina Hrasnová	SVK	73.12
3	Kathrin Klaas	GER	70.20
4	Inna Sayenko	UKR	66.74
5	Iryna Sekachova	UKR	66.35
6	Malgorzata Zadura	POL	64.69
7	Silvia Salis	ITA	64.54
8	Katarzyna Kita	POL	64.27
9	Malwina Sobierajska	POL	61.90

1	Piotr Malachowski	POL	65.98
2	Virgilijus Alekna	LTU	63.93
3	Zoltán Kövágó	HUN	62.22
4	Märt Israel	EST	60.86
5	Konrad Szuster	POL	60.75
6	Robert Urbanek	POL	60.54
7	Jarred Rome	USA	58.80
8	Przemyslaw Czajkowski	POL	56.40