Some sum up and thoughts.
WANG Mingjuan 317.676
CHINSHANLO Zulfiya 307.878
LI Xueying 314.045
MANEZA Maiya 305.820
AVDALYAN Nazik 313.392
PODOBEDOVA Svetlana 329.693
JANG Mi-ran 324.121
According to Sinclair points, the best lifter of the games was Svetlana Podobedova. She was also the only one to make all three world records in these championships. Other of the top three were Jang and Wang respectively.
She was really in top form, but this really wasn't a surprise since she was able to do world record already at junior age and performed really well in Asian championships – she also tried to break world records there with no luck.
Looking at the medal tables it is hard to remember that Chinese had their National games – this event occurs every fourth year – this year, which is a bigger competition to them since there is quite a rivalry between the provinces. In some classes the winners were not present due to they put all the effort in their own competition so national team place was given to others.
There is no getting away with the fact that they are number one in weightlifting at the moment. They seem to have old soviet-like training system where the gifted individuals are picked at a young age to different sport schools and trained hard. Some might think this is inhuman and enslaving system, but at least there is one point clear; it brings results.
Despite all this, I've understood that Chinese women team head coach Ma Wenghui is known for her human approach to the athletes. Many of these now winning competitors would have kicked out of the team due to injuries in some other countries if they'd have as good replacements as Chinese have, but Ma has built were close team where everybody supports each others. The whole team trains together before the competition, goes to different kind of events together etc. Whether this is only the public image, who know.
Kazakhstan was the second best country in these competitions and they have really improved since previous years. I don't know how much this is related with their new head coach Enver Türkileri who is a former Bulgarian-Turkish coach who used to work with such lifting legends as Naim Süleymano?lu and Halil Mutlu.
And the other thing is that many of the Kazakhstan lifters are originally from Russia but they have moved for a reason or another away from home country. According to some rumours it might be political issue but for a other hand, competition for national team is to tough that you can drop out if you have a bad year and they don't want to take you back.
Mikhail Koklyaev was according to some sources kicked from the team because he wanted to continue with his own coach but they tought that he should change to another one. There are many other cases but they don't seem to talk about those in the open – politics like in the old soviet days.
Sometimes it's a money issue, but I don't believe that Kazakhstan pays more than the Russ does. Qatar was known for buying athletes a few years ago – and Turkish did the sama few times – but it doesn't seem so popular any more. Ironic thing in some cases was, that the athlete himself continued training and living in the same place. He just wore a different suit in the international platform.
Russia didn't get a single total gold – only two from snatch gategories. Is this only a short period on unofortunate coincidences or something more, only time will tell. A bit surpisingly it seems that the ladies are keeping their old fame up.
Nahla Ramadan made an international comeback, but she was in no shape. She was 20 kg heavier than before and still she couldn't lift as much. Her competition was over after snatch lifts for some reason.
Liu Chunhong's performance was also a bit unexpected even though her little break and minor injuries were in public awareness, she was only a light shadow of her old stature. But she'll come back, I'm quite positive of that.
Injuries are very common in this sport. Thus many of the top athletes were missing from the list or didn't perform as well as they ought to do. Steiner, Chigishev , Ilin, Aramnau, Alihossein some to mention.
Most entertaining group personally mens 77 kg category where the competition was very tough and dramatic and individually probably Podobedova was most impressive.
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