Powerlifting: Record Breaking Performances in Hungary

The Hungarian Sports Federation for the Disabled hosted this year’s Open European Powerlifting Championships. They were held in Budapest from 29 October to 3 November, 2001.

In total, 48 female and 85 male powerlifters from 29 nations took part in this excellently organized event. Due to its open format the Championship welcomed participants from all nations and regions of the world. Delegations included teams from Mexico, Brazil, Qatar, Chinese Taipei and the United Arab Emirates.

The female athletes turned out to be in particularly good format the tournament. They topped the table of high class performers by improving a number of their own best past performances:

Three women, Carine Burgy, Tamara Podpalnaia and Lidiya Solovyova, laid down new standards by setting three new European Records and two World Records in their weight categories.

Carine Burgy of France, with a body weight of 83kg, took two attempts to topple her European Record of 125.00kg, which she first set in Morteau, France, on 12 May, 2001. She also beat the World Record set in Sydney by China’s Cao Ping. The new European and World Record now stands at 125.50kg.

The Russian Tamara Podpalnaia achieved a European and World Records in the 52 – 56kg category. After already having won the gold medal by lifting 120.00kg she came back to haul up 121.00kg. She thus improved her own European record of 117.50kg, which she had established in Waregem, Belgium on 3 June, 2000 as well as her World Record of 120.00kg, set at the Paralympic Summer in Sydney in 2000.

Lidiya Solovyova of Ukraine, like the other two women, fought to upgrade her own previous best performance. At the Paralympics in Sydney she had confirmed the European Record at 85kg for the 40kg weight category. In Budapest she improved this mark by an amazing 10kg. Like Podpalnaia, she thus hauled barbells of more than twice her own bodyweight.

The only man to break a record in Budapest was the Polish powerlifter Andrzej Gren. He started out with 142.50kg in his first attempt, lifted his own and the previous European best of 147.50kg in his second attempt and successfully added another 2.5kg in his third and last attempt to establish a new European Record for the 52-56kg class at 150.00kg.

At the Summer Games in Sydney Powerlifting had been at the center of the doping scandal which for the first time in history of the Paralympics saw athletes test positive for doping. It is therefore not surprising that the European Paralympic Committee chose the World Championships in Powerlifting as the final leg of their “Doping Disables” tour. The project was funded by the European Commission and is aimed at combating doping in the world of sports for athletes with disabilities, both within Europe and throughout the world. Besides displaying information on the hazardous consequences of doping, the project also trained officials on site and supervised doping tests. In total, fifty-nine doping tests were conducted, the results of which have not been made public yet.