European U23 Championships - new to international calendar in October 2009

The selection policy for the Great Britain team for the  European U23 Championships to be held from the 11^th to the 18^th October in Wladyslawowo has now been published, click here to view the GB team selection policy.  This will be the first year that there has been a European U23 Championships and  athletes born in 1986 up to and including 1994 are eligible.  This level of event should help athletes trying to make the successful transition from junior to senior  competition.  More information regarding the event can be found on the EWF website. 

European & World Lifting events this week.

Zoe Smith (58kg) and Ben Watson (94kg) both lift on Thursday at the European Junior Weightlifting Championships, Landskrona.  Watson lifts first at 10:00 am. and Smith 2nd at 12:00.  For both these athletes it will be the first time they have competed at this standard of competition, and both will be looking to gain valuable experience as they look towards London 2012.

Live results are to be posted on this website, and more details regarding start lists and timetables can be found here.

World Class Powerlifting Squad members Adam Alderman (seen here on the bench), Kyron Duke and Roxanne Lucock will all be in action this Friday in Belfast at the World Dwarf Games, where they are all on target to improve their current best totals.  Both Lucock and Duke spent time at the WCL High Performance Centre in Leeds, this week, with Nicola Vaughn-Ellis, the WCL Lead Performance Coach, working on technical points in preparation for this weeks event.   Vaughn-Ellis will be coaching these athletes in Belfast and was pleased with the progress they made while they were in Leeds.

Further information on the World Dwarf Games can be found here.

Perdue smashes PB

The British Weightlifting Championships was the first opportunity for a while for the senior lifters on the World Class Lifting Programme to demonstrate that they are making the progress required to continue to remain on the programme.  (A requirement of being on the World Class programme is to increase performance towards agreed targets, this means that even though someone may be the best in Britain in their weight category unless they continue to improve they will not remain on the programme).

Hannah Powell (48kg) improved her snatch PB by 1kg, as did Joanne Calvino (53kg).   Natasha Perdue who has made significant improvements in training and has been frustrated that this has not shown in recent competitions stepped up to the mark in this competition putting 8kg on her PB to record a 200kg total @ 69kg.  Michaela Breeze showed that she has fully recovered from the injuries that plagued her in 2008 posting a 209kg total, and was best lifter on Sinclair points.

In the men's event Graeme Kane put 1kg onto his PB (266kg @ 77kg) finishing second to Halil Zorba who took the British title at 77kg when he equaled Kane's  total but was at a lighter body weight, it was good to see Zorba lifting well after his injury at the same event in 2008.  In the 94kg category, Peter Kirkbride was slightly under par but still came away with the British title from Denis Catana on body weight, with a total of 316kg, and best lifter overall on Sinclair points.

Full results can be found on the BWLA website by clicking here.