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Tasmania Results – 2018 Australian Championships

Sep 11 2018

Team Performance

The 2018 Australian Weightlifting Championships were very successful for Tasmania. Our team of 12 athletes took 8 medals.

 

Senior

Junior

Gold

Kaitlyn Fassina (F87+)

Stephanie Pickrell (F49)

Silver

Stephanie Pickrell (F49)

Sean Fitzgerald (M81)

Zac Millhouse (M89)

Ryan Dudman (M109)

Bronze

 

Hannah Spinks (F64)

Telyshia Jones (M81)

 

The team performance was excellent on several accounts:

 

  • The team were successful with 53 out of a total of 72 lifts (73.6%)
  • Tasmania placed well in the team shields (3rd Junior Women, 3rd Junior Men, 3rd Senior Men)
  • Tasmania won nearly 7% of the 120 medals available with only 2% of the population)
  • Sean Fitzgerald and Kaitlyn Fassina were selected for the 2018 World Championship in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan in November.
  • Three of the team figured in the cash awards for best overall lifter (Stephanie Pickrell - Junior Female 3rd overall, Zac Millhouse – Junior Male 2nd overall, Kaitlyn Fassina – Senior Female 2nd overall)

Special mentions

  • Kayla Pennicott lifted in her first Australian Championships and scored a creditable 144 Total (Snatch 66, Clean & Jerk 78).
  • Ben Spinks raised his best Total by 2kg to 217 with a personal best clean and jerk of 124. He looked good for more.
  • Lincoln Bowman who has been struggling with a knee injury performed perhaps the most courageous and hardest lift of the championships by succeeding with 135 on his last attempt
  • Abbey Boon from Ulverstone was among the four youngest athletes in the event, all born in 2004
  • Alex Placogiannakis did well to recover from missing his first two competition attempts in the snatch and remained in the competition by succeeding with his 3rd.
  • Sean Fitzgerald raised his personal best total by 4kg to make the 288 required for selection to the World Championships.
  • Zac Millhouse raised his personal best total by 2kg to make 278, his snatch was a personal best by 2Kg.
  • Ryan Dudman raised his personal best snatch by 1kg from 91 to 92.
  • Kaitlyn Fassina was the only team member to score 6 out of 6 but Stephanie Pickrell, Hannah Spinks, Ben Spinks, Sean Fitzgerald and Ryan Dudman all scored 5 out of 6 lifts.

 

Very special thanks to

  • Mark Brown (Launceston PCYC) for his stalwart work as assistant coach
  • Beth Butt (Crossfit Agema) who was the understudy coach but did a marvellous job  with the team in several capacities – coaching, administration and transport
  • Sean Fitzgerald for helping out in Stephanie Pickrell’s sessions, Lincoln Bowman for helping out in Kayla Pennicott’s and Kaitlyn Fassina’s session. Great team work guys!
  • Robert Gotts (Ulverstone) who was the only referee to travel with the Tasmanian team. Robert is an International Category 2 referee.

 

Future thoughts

There is no doubt that Weightlifting is on a rising tide in Australia. These championships provided many more qualifiers, a good number of emerging talented athletes and several lift-for-lift close battles. The warm-up room showed many new faces in the ranks of coaching and I came way with a great deal of positivity for the health of the sport.

 

However, athletes need support in the form of administrators, coaches, referees, event organisers, promotion and publicity personnel. Driving a sport forward takes more that just recruitment of athletes and the availability of coaching. If you think you can provide any assistance in any capacity, please give me a call (see below).

 

Urgent Notice

 

Most people think that to be successful in Weightlifting you have to be large in stature and naturally strong. Neither of these two propositions gives the correct view of the attributes that make a successful Weightlifter.

 

Weightlifting is a sport that is suitable for people of ANY HEIGHT. In fact we urgently need to recruit athletes in the lowest 10% of height.

 

Weightlifting requires SPEED, COORDINATION and FLEXIBILITY. People who like gymnastics, dance, ballet, sprinting and jumping will do well in Weightlifting.  The notion of natural strength being important is incorrect. Instead think of Weightlifters as being very fast and well-coordinated athletes.


LEO ISAAC

President of Weightlifting Tasmania

Head Coach of the Tasmanian Team

Mobile: 0423 767 955

 
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