IWF120y/8 – 2000: Dika Toua (PNG), an example of longevity in sport!

Despite her tiny and fragile appearance (she is 1.50m tall and weighs about 50kg), Loa Dika Toua (PNG) is a perfect example of determination, perseverance, and longevity in sport! She is just 16, when in 2000, she is the first woman to lift a bar in the Olympic arena, at the Sydney Games, when the door opened for female participation in weightlifting. Competing in the 48kg, she finished 10th. Still, that discreet debut was just the start of a very long career that included four additional Olympic participations and an impressive number of 45 competitions in the IWF results database from 2000 to 2024! In Athens 2004, she gets her best placing (sixth), but in Beijing 2008 she lifts her heaviest total (184kg) in the Games – she did not do better in London 2012, or Tokyo 2020ne. At the 2024 IWF World Cup in Phuket (THA), a couple of months before turning 40 (Dika Toua was born on June 23, 1984), she does a good result of 171kg, but that would prove insufficient for an unprecedented sixth Olympic qualification (for the Paris Games). Her best-ever result at the international level was an 82-111-193 performance at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, where she earned gold in the 53kg. Mother of two, she is currently the President of the Papua New Guinea Weightlifting Federation and was recently in the headlines, when she won in September 2024 a Masters competition in Suva (FIJ), in the 40-44 age group category, lifting 68-90-158!