Dominant Li lifts China's fifth weightlifting gold at Paris Olympics / Photo: Arun SANKAR - AFP
Dominant Li lifts China's fifth weightlifting gold at Paris Olympics
China's Li Wenwen eased to victory Sunday in the women's heavyweight class to give her nation a fifth gold in the Olympic weightlifting competition in Paris -- hoisting her coach in the air to celebrate.
In the event for women with a bodyweight above 81 kilogrammes, the 150kg Li, who also won the superheavyweight category at the Tokyo Games, dominated.
She was so far ahead after two lifts in both the snatch and clean and jerk that she was able to pass on her final attempt in both categories.
At the end, with victory assured, she came out for the final lift of the Paris Olympic weightlifting competition and instead of picking up the bar, lifted her coach, Wu Meijin.
"A lot of people said on-line that I should lift my coach," Li said. "I didn't know if he would get angry, but I did it anyway."
The 24-year-old finished with a total of 309kg, 10kg ahead of Park Hye-jeong of South Korea, with Tokyo silver medallist Emily Campbell of Britain another 11kg behind.
Traditionally the men's superheavyweights close the Olympic programme. In their place, the women spent the morning hamming for the crowd who responded with raucous support.
Campbell did a cartwheel on stage after her last attempt.
"We've got big characters in our group. I think that's what people respond to," Campbell said. "It's the last day of the Olympics. I think everyone's just having one last big party."
"I don't think they'll be putting the men on last again."
While the Chinese took half the ten weightlifting golds with the United States tied for second, the sport, practised in sweaty gyms at all levels of society around the world, did spread the success.
Several large Olympic countries lying in the lower reaches of the medals table, notably Colombia, Thailand and Indonesia, lifted their small totals, as did traditional weightlifting powers Bulgaria and Georgia.
Ecuador's two bronzes came from sisters Neisi Dajomes and Angie Palacios. After her victory, Dajomes said she and her sister were the Venus and Serena Williams of Olympic weightlifting.
For years weightlifting dominated Olympic doping headlines, but three years ago in Tokyo returned no positives.
As women started the last event in Paris on Sunday, the International Testing Agency said that no weightlifters had so far failed tests, but added it would be one or two days before their labs processed all the samples collected on Saturday and Sunday.
D.Findlay--EWJ
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