We have women's weightlifting this afternoon so it is time to squeeze some culture into our Olympic trip. We walk back over to the London Bridge Underground station and for the first time head West instead of East to Olympic Park. Three stops later, we get out at Westminster. I love the London subway system and can't figure out why anyone would own a car. We've talked about it a lot, but here is a picture from the Jubilee line platform in London Bridge station:
We walk out of the station and find that we have intercepted the Women's marathon course:
Given the complaints about ticket prices that we've heard, I expect that there will be huge crowds her as there is no cost to attend. Fortunately, it doesn't start for another two hours so we have some time to look around. There is plenty to see. On one side of the street is Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament:
On the other side of the street is Westminster Abbey:
We walk around for a while on what the locals call the Mall (pronounced mal) and see statues of Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill to name just a few. Then we get back onto the Underground for a quick ride back to our hotel. Along the way, we stop at a place called Prete a' Manger. This is a chain of sandwich shops that makes both vegan and regular sandwiches daily and which donates the sandwiches that don't sell each day to the local soup kitchens that help the homeless.
We have just enough time to get cleaned up before heading off to the ExCel arena for weightlifting. Our trip takes us onto a newly built Underground line called the DLR. This is a light rail system (i.e. above ground) that goes through the area called the Docklands where most of the ship traffic for London ends up.
Excel arena is very much like the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. It houses a wide variety of Olympic sports like Boxing, Table Tennis, Wrestling, Taekwondo, Judo and Weightlifting. For some reason, we don't have three tickets together today so Beth sits with Sean and I sit with a couple of "Olympic junkies" from Sydney, Australia.
Today's event is the women's +75kg weightlifting. These are really, really big women, but there are all sorts of body types. Most women probably don't want to see their weights up in bright lights on the scoreboard, but if there is a tie, the lightest woman woman wins so up on the scoreboard the weights go. The lightest woman in the competition, at 78.53kg (173lbs) is Alberta Ampomah from Ghana:
The heaviest woman, at 157.04kg (346lbs) is Holley Mangold from the US:
Also on the board are the initial weights that each woman will attempt to lift. It is clear that this is going to be a special event because two women, Zhou Lulu (Zhou is her last name) from China and Tatiana Kashirina from Russia are both going to try to break the existing Olympic record for the Snatch on their first lift! I am not going to go into all of the rules of weightlifting here, but if you want to read about it, take a look at my blog called The Crucible.
The person lifting first is the person lifting the lowest weight, but there is some switching around as one lifter may decide to increase what they will try to lift and change places with another lifter. If a lifter fails to lift the weight, they have 2 additional minutes to try again.
We progress through the lighter weights. It is clear that there are perhaps 4 lifters who have a chance of winning a bronze medal while Zhou and Kashirina will win gold and silver unless they get hurt. Several of the women, including Mangold are clearly dealing with injuries so this is a possibility.
The real excitement starts when Zhou breaks the Olympic record of 140kg with her first lift in the Snatch of 142kg. That record lasts for about 2 minutes until Kashirina breaks the record with a lift of 144kg. Zhou failed at 146kg, but was successful on her 3rd lift to set another Olympic record. The crowd was already fired up when Kashirina came out to attempt a World record lift of 149kg and went totally nuts when she made it:
A couple minutes later, Kashirina added 2kg and increased her World record. To give you an idea of how strong the competition was, 9 of 14 competitors were able to lift more than their body weight in the Snatch!
The event is running behind schedule so there was basically no time between the end of the Snatch and the beginning of the Clean & Jerk. Again, we started with the people lifting the lowest weight and worked our way up. While Kashiruba and Zhou were basically in their own league, there were four women who have a realistic chance of winning the bronze medal after the Snatch: Marian Usman from Nigeria, Nahla Ramadan from Egypt, Jang Mi-Ran from Korea (who is the defending Gold medalist and holds the World record in the Clean & Jerk) and Hripsime Khurshudyan from Armenia (try saying that one three times fast).
Ramadan is successful on her first lift of 150kg (272kg total) and is able to increase her total to 277kg before failing to lift 158kg on her final lift. Jang quickly erases that total with a first lift of 158kg giving her a total of 283kg. Her 158kg lift was matched by Khurshudyan who took the lead at the time with a 286kg total. Usman nearly succeeded at lifting 160kg, but could not lock one of her elbows and was given a no lift. Here second lift was even worse, she dropped the bar as she was trying to get it to her shoulders and hurt her elbow in the process. There was a camera in the warm-up area and we see the Nigerian coach spray her elbow to freeze her nerves and kill the pain. This can't be good. I can't imagine lifting 160kg in any situation, but trying to do it with an injured elbow is crazy. But I guess if this is the moment that you've been working toward for the past four years, you would give it a try especially since Usman finished fifth in Beijing at the age of 18. Unfortunately, she again cannot get the weight to her shoulder in gets a dnf (did not finish).
With Usman out, there are only two women left with a chance for the bronze: Jang and Khurshudyan. Jang is successful on her second lift of 164kg to take the lead with a total of 289kg. Khurshudyan has one advantage - she weights more than 30kg less than Jang so Khurshudyan would win if there is a tie. She sets the weight at 166kg, but fails in her attempt so she has two minutes to try again. This time, she is successful and moves into first place with a total of 294kg. Now the pressure is back on Jang who must lift at least 170kg to win the bronze medal. This is much less than her World record of 186kg, but she may be injured because she fails on her last attempt. After her attempt, she knelt at the back of the stage and it felt to me like she was announcing her retirement. On the other hand, you would have thought that Khurshudyan had won the gold medal she was so happy.
Now it was on to the real business of the event. Kashirina sets the weight at 175kg and makes it look easy as she goes into first place with a total of 326kg which ties the Olympic record for total. Zhou counters with a lift of 181kg and sets an Olympic record total of 327kg. She has no expression when she completes the lift - ho-hum, another day at the gym! Kashirina keeps the weight at 181kg and again lifts it "easily". This gives her both the lead, the Olympic record and another world record for her total at 332kg. Zhou is heavier so she sets the bar at 187kg. The crowd goes from screaming wildly as Zhou comes on stage to dead silent as she steps up to the weight. Zhou gives some sort of yell (casting away evil spirits??) and grasps the bar. After a few seconds, she lifts it quite easily to her shoulders. Then she drives one foot forward and one foot backward to help drive the weight upward. She locks her elbows, wobbles a little and then waits until she hears the buzzer telling her that she has a good lift before dropping the weight:
Now Zhou has a total of 333kg. Kashirina could have increased her total by lifting a lesser weight before Zhou, but she wanted to be able to respond to whatever Zhou lifted, so now she has to try the same 187kg weight. Perhaps the pressure got to the 21 year old because she failed to get a good enough grip on the bar and dropped it on the way up to her shoulders and Zhou wins the gold medal. However, it is clear that Kashirina is thrilled with her silver medal and will surely be in Rio to try to win a gold medal. I would also be remissed if I did not mention the fact that 19 year old Luisa Peters from the Cook Islands set national records in the Snatch, Clean & Jerk and Total - well done! What an event!
The DLR is pretty packed on our way back to the hotel. We talk to an older woman (okay, she was probably our age!) from New Zealand who is curious about my pins. I happen to have a pin from Sydney shaped like a boomerang in my give-away pocket. I give it to her and show her the National Olympic Committee pins on my hat.
About that time, a young black woman plops down in front of us. She is frantically trying to dry off her passport which has gotten wet. The lady from New Zealand is speaking with her while we listen in. She explains that she is an athlete on the French team and had a Coke blow up in her backpack. I am trying to read her passport upside down and think that her name is Muriel Hurtis. She is running in the 4x400m relay in a few days. Unfortunately, she is still working on her passport when we get to our stop so I don't get a chance to ask her if she has any pins to trade. Oh well, at least we got to meet at least one athlete at this Olympics.
Steps for the day: 15,400
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