3 February 2022
Over the weekend of the 12th-13th February, Canolfan Brailsford was the venue for the Weightlifting Wales Para Powerlifting Open, in which five Para Powerlifters competed, with Rachel Leck, from Jersey taking the gold position in the women’s division, and Sean Gaffney taking the gold in the men’s division.
The competition continued with the Welsh Age Groups, with the youngest competitors taking part in the competition being just 8 years old! As always, lifters under the age of 12 were scored on technical points together with their total lifted, (rather than on total lifted alone) to encourage good technique. We saw some fantastic lifting and some top scores were produced!
A special well done to Grace Morris for taking the Clean and Jerk record to 70kg in the girl’s under 15’s and under 17’s 81kg+ categories, and to Harry Nelms who, not long after recently breaking some Welsh records at the British Championships less than a month ago in the 102kg class, decided to cut weight to compete at the 96kg category where he continued his record-breaking performances with some new Welsh under 23 and senior records!
Another well done to Lotty Whalley, who scored the highest Sinclair score of all the female lifters who took part in this competition, and another well done to Harry Nelms who also scored the highest Sinclair score of all the male lifters in the competition.
On day two, WW held an Open Weightlifting event to include Master's weightlifting categories as well. For a number of competitors, this was their first ever competition and it was fantastic to see so many new faces in one of our events. We look forward to hopefully seeing many more in the future!
Another well done to Filip Taylor who achieved the highest male sinclair score of the day, and to Sophie Harrison who achieved the highest female sinclair score of the day!
A big thank you to our Competition Manager Justin Head, and his team of volunteer officials and the loaders of the competition. We thank you all for the time and work you put into running successful Weightlifting and Para Powerlifting events in Wales, we also thank Bangor University who go above and beyond to help set up and run competitions in this venue.
If you are keen to get involved in helping out at the next WW event, please contact Justin at justin.head@weightlifting.wales.
Our next Welsh Open competition will be held in June this year in Bangor.
