The 2006 USA Weightlifting World Team



This is a little montage of the members of the 2006 USA World Team. They will compete in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) next week. This world championship event is very important, as it is the initial competition for team slots for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The US is hoping to score big points on the women's side and field a full team (4 athletes) for the 2008 Olympics.

The men have a tough road ahead of them, but may benefit from many recent positive drug tests at the European Championships. In fact, the Iranian team had 9 lifters (all male I presume) test positive and the entire team was banned from competing next week. The US could score some higher places and needed points if we do well. Our athletes face a very challenging task, competing against some teams and federations who expertly and systematically apply doping science and practice.

In a fine show of the political cesspool of elite international sport, the current superheavyweight world and Olympic champion, Hossein Reza Zadeh of Iran, was personally invited to compete this week by the the IWF Feds after his team was banned. You see, the International Weightlifting Federation wants the world to see the best of the big boys compete, regardless of the rules. These bad boys are the big show--like the sprinters in track & field--their feats of absolute power jazz the crowds and draw television and sponsor attention. Apparently Reza Zadeh tested negative. But nine of his teammates did not??? Right....

Comments

Moby Dick said…
Like the American athletes DON'T use the best of doping science???
2:00 PM
Tracy Fober said…
Well, if they are, these weightlifters are passing bunches of unnanounced tests, in and out of competition.
12:59 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more