Source: Radio New Zealand
New Zealand weightlifter Litia Nacagilevu. All Shots Media
Weightlifting New Zealand is hoping Aotearoa will have its first female Commonwealth Games gold medalist next year as an impressive group of young lifters come through the ranks.
The sport has just completed its national championships, with more than 100 lifters taking part from around the country and the South Pacific.
Significantly, almost two-thirds of the athletes competing were women.
Two world-ranked teenagers were the stars of the event, Olivia Selemaia and Litia Nacagilevu dominating their divisions.
Selemaia, 19 – who finished eighth at this year’s world championships – set Oceania and national records in winning the 69kg class, while 18-year-old Nacagilevu – who finished ninth at the world champs – also broke records in the 86kg class.
While the two have impressed on the world stage, Weightlifting New Zealand president Simon Kent said the depth in the sport had grown significantly and they were now seeing the results of investment at the school level.
“Especially the women’s depth has grown in the last half-a-dozen years,” Kent told RNZ.
“The number of clubs has grown and there is good involvement with our community schools programme Lift for Gold. We’ve really invested, there is more exposure and more young people are getting to have a crack at the sport.
“From a high-performance perspective, we’ve really targeted investing in these young ones over the last couple of years and they’re now coming through.”
New Zealand weightlifter Olivia Selemaia All Shots Media
As a result, Kent expected as many as a dozen lifters (six men and six women) could compete at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, with the hope that a woman could come away with New Zealand’s first weightlifting gold medal.
New Zealand has won 40 weightlifting medals at the Commonwealth Games over the years, including 12 gold. They have included victories for legends of the sport like Precious McKenzie, Tony Ebert, Don Oliver, Graham May, Darren Liddel, Richie Patterson and David Liti.
Since women’s weightlifting was added to the Games programme in 2002, the closest a Kiwi has come was the silver medal won by Olivia Baker in 2002.
“The one thing missing is we’ve never had a female win a gold medal, and we think with this young group coming through there is every possibility that that could happen next year,” Kent said.
“What Olivia [Selemaia] has done over the last year proving that she is genuinely a world class athlete and not far behind is Latia [Nacagilevu], who is also demonstrating that she has wonderful potential.”
Both those lifters have stiff competition in the Commonwealth, but Kent was confident they could contend for titles, and as teenagers they still had a long way to go in their careers.
All the major contenders for the New Zealand Commonwealth Games weightlifting team will compete at the Oceania Championships in Samoa in April, which will be the last qualifying event before the Games.
Selemaia, Nacagilevu and David Liti were all ranked in the top three in the Commonwealth and all-but assured of selection for the Games.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
