Rob Bayham, the Active Wellbeing Project Manager at ColegauCymru said “It’s great to see the collaboration between Coleg Sir Gar, Llanelli Weightlifting Academy and Welsh Weightlifting, supported grant funding from Sport Wales and college investment developing this old facility into a new training environment. FE colleges across Wales support a wide range of community sport at their sports facilities, this partnership model benefits young people and adults at the club, college and in the wider community”.

Head coach at Llanelli Weightlifting, Mathew De Filippo had the following to add “Thanks to the Raise the Bar initiative, we were able to offer free weightlifting sessions to local teenagers for six weeks. However, we faced a challenge as we did not have enough space to run a Raise the Bar group alongside our Youth Academy programme. Fortunately, a collaboration between Sport Wales, the Welsh Government, the Local Council, Weightlifting Wales, Coleg Sir Gar, and our organisation made it possible to triple the floor space of our gymnasium. As of 27th October 2023, we have provided free sessions to 237 young people, and we owe this success to the generous "Be Active Grant" we received.

Some positive outcomes that have resulted from the "Be Active Grant" are the initiation of Adult Strength and Conditioning Classes, the provision of support to a para-athlete, and the development of our Adult Weightlifting Club. As a result of these efforts, Helen Qualters has become the British Masters Champion in her age and weight category.

We're happy to report that our Youth Academy Programme is thriving, and we're proud of the progress made by all our attendees. It's exciting to see several of our athletes being selected for the new Regional Squads, and we hope that this is just the beginning of many more of our athletes being selected for future squads.

Thanks to the Be Active Grant, we can now use our state-of-the-art facility to give back to the larger weightlifting community by hosting future competitions and National Squad training camps. We've already scheduled an Academy open event on November 4th, 2023, and we're also set to host an event organised by Coleg Cymru and Weightlifting Wales in 2024.

Our hope is that this collaboration allows us to support our local community and develop Commonwealth athletes of the future.”

"We have always believed in providing high quality coaching, equipment and facilities for our learners and student athletes. The collaboration between the college and the Llanelli Weightlifting Academy, has allowed us to access funding and support from Sport Wales and Weightlifting Wales, to create a facility that is truly sector leading in further education.
Our sport students from levels 1 to 3 and over 160 student athletes are fortunate enough to have this as their classroom and training space.
We are very excited to host the first face to face Welsh Colleges Weightlifting competition next June.” Stephen Williams, sport lecturer.

Simon Roach, strategy and development manager at Weightlifting Wales added: “The new facility at Coleg Sir Gâr is very impressive and provides a top-class training environment for pathway development, talent identification and elite level training. The unique partnership between Coleg Sir Gar, Weightlifting Wales and the community-based Llanelli Weightlifting academy has already heightened club participation and is providing excellent provision for students. The new facility will play an important part in supporting the National Governing Bodies strategy and its structure for Weightlifting and Para Powerlifting pathways.”