IFs
16.07.2023
Weightlifting mums and South Korean medal contender among 10 given IWF help for Paris 2024
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Two of the most popular weightlifters in Oceania and a record-breaking young woman from Ireland are on the list of 10 athletes who will receive financial help in their quest to qualify for next year's Olympic Games in Paris.
Others who will receive payments from the new International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Athlete Direct Support Programme include a Ugandan who has to "sell stuff on the streets" to fund his training, and a South Korean second in the women’s super-heavyweight rankings.
Two athletes from each Continental Federation, one male and one female, have been chosen by a selection panel to receive $3,000 (£2,250/€2,700) to help their qualifying efforts, the first $1,000 (£750/€900) of which will be paid this month.
Further payments will be made in October and February, subject to reports on their progress.
The oldest on the list is Dika Toua from Papua New Guinea, the first woman ever to make a lift at the Olympic Games way back at Sydney 2000 who is trying to enter the record books.
Toua is the only woman to have lifted at five Olympic Games and is hoping to become the first weightlifter of either gender to compete at six.
She was 16 when she walked on to the platform in Sydney 23 years ago — a no-lift that was followed by enough good ones to place her 10th.
Toua, who will be 40 next summer and who has two teenaged children, spent weeks in an isolation ward and was close to death in 2013 when she was struck down by tuberculosis.
She recovered and, remarkably, won a gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Toua, who lifts at 49 kilograms and has never weighed more than 53kg in her life, has been PNG’s flag bearer at the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony twice, first at Athens 2004 and then again at Tokyo 2020.
Others who will receive payments from the new International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Athlete Direct Support Programme include a Ugandan who has to "sell stuff on the streets" to fund his training, and a South Korean second in the women’s super-heavyweight rankings.
Two athletes from each Continental Federation, one male and one female, have been chosen by a selection panel to receive $3,000 (£2,250/€2,700) to help their qualifying efforts, the first $1,000 (£750/€900) of which will be paid this month.
Further payments will be made in October and February, subject to reports on their progress.
The oldest on the list is Dika Toua from Papua New Guinea, the first woman ever to make a lift at the Olympic Games way back at Sydney 2000 who is trying to enter the record books.
Toua is the only woman to have lifted at five Olympic Games and is hoping to become the first weightlifter of either gender to compete at six.
She was 16 when she walked on to the platform in Sydney 23 years ago — a no-lift that was followed by enough good ones to place her 10th.
Toua, who will be 40 next summer and who has two teenaged children, spent weeks in an isolation ward and was close to death in 2013 when she was struck down by tuberculosis.
She recovered and, remarkably, won a gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Toua, who lifts at 49 kilograms and has never weighed more than 53kg in her life, has been PNG’s flag bearer at the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony twice, first at Athens 2004 and then again at Tokyo 2020.
New Zealand super-heavyweight David Liti is among other weightlifters from Oceania chosen by the IWF to be part of its Athlete Direct Support Programme ©Getty Images
Joining Toua from Oceania is the New Zealand super-heavyweight David Liti, who is 13th in the Paris rankings and was a winner at the IWF Grand Prix in Havana last month.
Thammy Nguyen, who left Vietnam as a young girl when her family moved to Ireland, and Yusuf Genc from Turkey are the Europeans selected.
Nguyen, who also has two children and who gave up competing for nearly seven years, became Ireland’s first female medallist at the European Championships in Yerevan this year when she took a clean and jerk bronze at 49kg. She is driven by a desire to join her brother Nhat, who competed in badminton for Ireland in Tokyo 2020, at the Olympic Games.
Genc is ranked 11th in the 73kg category. The two chosen from Africa are Niyoyita Davis, the 61kg lifter from Uganda who has to train outdoors because of a lack of facilities, and hawk goods on the streets, and teenager Rachel Enock from Kenya, who lifted at 71kg in last year’s IWF World Championships in Bogotá.
From Asia, the selections are both highly placed in the Paris 2024 rankings: Reza Dehdar from Iran at 102kg and the outstanding South Korean women’s super-heavyweight Park Hyejeong, who is the strongest medal contender among the 10.
Park, 20, is close to joining the elite group of women to have made a 300kg total and is ranked second behind China’s Li Wenwen. The Pan American choices are Omarie Mears, a Jamaican 89kg lifter who trains in England, and the Argentinian Maria Casadevall,ranked in the top 20 at 59kg.
Selections were made by a panel featuring weightlifting’s most decorated Olympian Pyrros Dimas, two members of the IWF Athletes Commission – chair Forrester Osei from Ghana and Olympic champion Maude Charron from Canada – and independent member Ioannis Mournianakis, a Greek sports lawyer.
Thammy Nguyen will also receive help as she bids to follow her brother Nhat, who represented Ireland at the last Olympics in badminton at Tokyo 2020 ©ITG
The IWF said in a statement that the panel "took special care to allocate the funding to athletes from countries which do not have a well-developed support system and, at the same time, to ensure the selected athletes meet the geographic diversity requirements set out by the IWF.
"In this respect, and considering the number, background and weight categories of the applicants, the selection panel took particular aim at awarding the grant to aid the athletes with the greatest needs of it."
The $30,000 (£23,000/€27,000) funding, of which $25,000 (£19,000/€22,250) comes from the IWF and $5,000 (£3,800/€4,450) from its President Mohamed Jalood, is given specifically to help athletes qualify for Paris 2024.
While the intent was to select athletes in the top 25 of the rankings there were some exceptions, and the panel also decided to select two women at 49kg and none at 81kg.
The initiative for the project came from Osei and the IWF Athletes Commission.
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