Bahrain, Day 1: Historic podium place for Brazil, gold for Thailand and world records for China’s newcomer Zhao

There were victories for China and Thailand, plus world records for China as Asian athletes filled five of the six podium places on total on day one of the 2024 IWF World Championships in Bahrain.

It would have been six out of six for Asia but for a remarkable performance by Thiago Felix from Brazil, whose silver at 55kg was a first ever senior Worlds medal on total for one of the sport’s most improved nations.

He was in the lead until Natthawat Chomchuen from Thailand made his fifth lift. Chomchuen finished 120-153-273, up 14kg on his total when he was third at last year’s World Championships.

Natthawat Chomchuen (THA)

Pang Un Chol from PRK took clean and jerk gold but had bombed out in snatch, while Yang Yang from China could not build on second place in snatch, dropping to fifth on total. Fernando Agad from the Philippines was third.

The triple Olympic super-heavyweight champion Lasha Talakhadze, who weighs more than all three men on the podium, was among the medal presenters. He is not competing in Bahrain but took part in the opening ceremony on Thursday.

Felix excelled in gymnastics and took up CrossFit before he became a weightlifter seven years ago, despite coming from a non-sporting Sao Paulo family. He competed at 61kg for more than four years before taking a break from competition to drop down to 55kg and prepare for this event.

Thiago Felix (BRA)

“This medal was always the target, I thought I could do it,” said Felix, who will be 24 later this month. “I took my time to lose the weight, had good nutrition, kept calm and found it quite easy to cut down.

“Now I have to go back up again because of the change in weight categories, but there’s more than six months till the Pan American Championships so I can take my time again.”

Brazil’s national coach Dragos Doru Stanica also put in quite a performance, enhancing his reputation as the loudest coach in weightlifting.

“I nearly lost my voice, and as you can see it’s moments like these that make me lose my hair,” he said. “I’m so proud of Thiago, competing against China, PRK, Thailand, Vietnam. He is well suited to 55 and wasn’t going anywhere at 61, so that’s why we went down. This is a great result.”

Felix made a six-from-six 121-148-269 for snatch gold, clean and jerk bronze and second place on total. It was only 2kg below his best total at 61kg. Agad made 116-147-263 to finish 1kg ahead of Saudi Arabia’s Mansour Al Saleem, who was fourth. Four athletes failed to make a total, including two from Vietnam.

There were good moments for Brazil in August and September, too. Laura Amaro – who also likes to make a lot of noise – finished seventh at the Paris Olympic Games after qualifying at 81kg, and Mattheus Pessanha briefly held a junior world record when he was second at the World Juniors in Spain in September.

Zhao Jinhong (CHN)

China entered the women’s 45kg category at a World Championships for the first – and only – time and ended with a sweep of gold medals plus two world records that will probably never be beaten.

Zhao Jinhong, who was competing internationally for the first time at the age of 23, finished well clear of PRK’s reigning champion Won Hyon Sim. Won started the session with all three world records but finished with only one.

The 45kg category will cease to exist from June next year, after the IWF agreed on new weights and a reduction from 10 categories to eight. The last time China had entered the lightest women’s category at a World Championships was in 2015, when Jiang Huihua won aged 17. That was at 48kg, before the categories changed in 2018.

Won Hyon Sim (PRK)

Zhao showed that she might have won many more times in the past few years if China had opted to challenge in the non-Olympic 45kg category. Her first lift on the world stage gave her the lead ahead of Won, and her third was a snatch world record attempt. She failed on 88kg, but Zhao made amends when her fifth lift on 110kg gave her two world records, in clean and jerk and total.

Zhao bettered them on her final attempt, finishing 87-113-200. It was no great surprise because last year Zhao had totalled 198kg in a national championship, 2kg better than the world record.

Won retained her snatch world record – both she and Zhao failed to beat it on 88kg – but missed her final two attempts and finished 9kg behind on 86-105-191.

Pham Dinh Thi from Vietnam moved up from fifth in snatch to third on total with 73-97-170.

Cicely Kyle (USA)

There might have been three world records for Cicely Kyle from the United States, too – in Masters weightlifting. Kyle, who finished fifth, is the oldest athlete in the Championships at 40.

She made three good lifts on 72-95-167, narrowly failing with an American clean and jerk record attempt at 98kg. “That would have been nice – but they’re Masters records for sure!” Kyle said. At national level, yes, but despite exceeding the 40-44 age group world records by some distance, they will not count because they were not made in a Masters competition.

Kyle was in gymnastics and competitive fitness before starting in weightlifting about 10 years ago. “I had my first international competition in 2020, when I was 36, and then the world shut down because of Covid,” she said. Fifteen months later she won the Pan American title.

Kyle is a physician’s assistant in the critical care department of a hospital. Her medical training helped her to pull off a remarkable feat six months ago, when she dislocated a finger performing a clean at a national competition, popped it back into place with the barbell across her shoulders, and completed the lift.

“It’s still pretty much out of shape,” Kyle said, holding up her crooked finger. Asked which body parts hurt the most when you’re still competing at 40, she said, “The knees, definitely.

“I don’t know whether I’ll keep going after this – it depends what my knees are telling me. They’re feeling good now but tomorrow they might be telling me something different.”

By Brian Oliver

Photos by DBM/deepbluemedia