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Denise Ramsay-Overall (kneeling) with clients at the Moberly Sports and Education Centre |
This lady’s really got a load to lift
DENISE Ramsay-Overall must feel like she has the weight of the world on her shoulders.
The fitness instructor from Paddington is set to fly Rio, Brazil, to win a crucial qualifier for Trinidad and Tobago’s women’s weightlifting team.
If she is placed, the former British colony, not known for its weightlifting prowess, will win a wildcard entry to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Ms Ramsay-Overall, a former English and British champion in the 69kg category, said she faced tough competition.
China’s Chunhong Liu smashed three world records in the 2004 Olympics, lifting 275kg – the equivalent of a fully-grown male gorilla.
But Ms Ramsay-Overall, whose top lift this year was 190kg, said poor sports facilities were to blame for the gulf in class.
She said: “We are not a sporting nation. In Britain we do not have the facilities at grass roots. I have to do a 22-mile round trip to Crystal Palace to a gym where I can do the sort of training I need to do. These new corporate gyms they build do not have the right kind of facilities to train athletes.”
She added: “In China, if you are good at a sport the government will look after your family. That’s why they do so well. It’s the same with the east European contingent.
The first Olympic medal ever won by Trinidad and Tobago under Commonwealth rule was in 1948 – a silver in weightlifting by Rodney Wilkes.
But since then the Caribbean paradise, which won independence in 1965, has fostered no weightlifting champs.
And were she to win – it would be the first women’s medal for the republic.
Ms Ramsay-Overall has been working as a sports coach in the Moberly Sports and Education
Centre for seven years.
She said: “I love my work because it helps older people have a better quality of life. When they reach 50 people think things start to break down, but they don’t at all.
She added: “Legs are the biggest muscles and the ones that help you retain your independence so it is vital they get a work-out, and as such a big part of it includes squat routines and sitting to standing movements.” |
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