Lothian insists the signs are positive ahead of Commonwealth year
BRITISH weightlifting's world class performance manager Fiona Lothian insists the signs are positive ahead of next year's vital Commonwealth season.
POSITIVE SIGNS: BWLA world class performance manager Fiona Lothian insists British weightlifting is making progress ahead of a busy 2010 season (Getty Images)
The British Weightlifting Association were dealt a cruel blow when their funding from UK Sport was slashed by 57.6 per cent after the Beijing Olympics. It left the BWLA unsure of how they would manage after the London Games.
But a subsequent relocation to a high performance centre in Leeds, along with the appointment of Hungarian head coach Tamas Feher, has seen the governing body steady what was quickly heading towards becoming a sinking ship.
And after just one athlete, Michaela Breeze, reached the Beijing Olympics last year, two more (Gurbinder Cheema and Natasha Perdue) achieved the standard for this November's World Championships in Koyang.
And although injuries restricted Breeze and Cheema from competing in Korea, Lothian is adamant the sport is slowly heading in the right direction again.
"Since the funding was announced, our stance has been to push on to London and go as far as we can," said Lothian.
"We can still focus on achieving targets every year and last year it was to establish the centre and get as many people as possible to qualify for the worlds.
"In the end we had three people qualify. Obviously, a couple couldn't go because of injuries but Natasha went out and did well.
"It was her first world competition for two years so it was more a return to the world level than anything else but she also had an injury beforehand, so she was pleased to get back.
"But it is easy to see the difference the performance centre and Tamas' coaching has had on the athletes' technical ability. Natasha and Paraskev Gounaris have moved up to Leeds and their fitness has improved so much since they've been here as well."
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In Fiona Lothian's article about the shape of British Weightlifting she states that Michaela Breeze "qualified" for the Beijing Olympics. Indeed Breeze was not capable of qualifying due to injury and was only included on a "wildcard " entry obtained through the efforts of BWLA - otherwise we would have had no lifters .
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