Calvin’s Hub

There goes our medal hopes for our women’s weightlifting. 17-year old Hidilyn Diaz failed to get any medal on the Womens 58kg Weightlifting event yesterday (Aug. 11) finishing 2nd to the last .

Ok, so who’s Erlina “Lily” Pecante?

Image from ZestPowerGym.com

If you haven’t googled her name yet, she’s just the world-record holder in the women’s 90-kg squat event who won our country 4 gold medals in the Asian Powerlifting Championship held in Uzbekistan last May. Pretty impressive for a postal office worker huh?

So why didn’t she compete in the Olympics?

Well it’s because she’s a powerlifter which is quite different from an Olympic weightlifter. In weightlifting, a person raises a barbell from the floor to over his head while in powerlifting, movements are shorter. For example, in the squat event of powerlifting, an athlete stands under a racked barbell, lifts the barbell, squats and stands up.

Training and conditioning for powerlifting and weighlifting is very different so Lily might not excel in the Olympics unlike in the APC. She needs to re-condition her body for weightlifting to do well. Maybe if powerlifting becomes part of the weightlifting event in the Olympics we’d probably win a gold with Lily.

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Filed under: Olympic Tidbits, Think About It