World Championships 2007 Report 

World Championships 2007: Report and pictures

Then years after organizing the World Senior championships in chiang Mai, the Thai Weightlifting Federation was hosting the 76th Men's  and 19th women's championships from 14th till 26th of September in the same city. (I was one of the few lifters that also competed ten years ago!)
These championships, dedicated to King Bhumibol's 80th birthday, were the 76th for Men and 19th for Women.

Chiang Mai, is the second biggest city after Bangkok (located about 700 kilometres north of it) and covers an area of 20.000 square metres in the northern mountainous region with a city population of about 250000. Chiang Mai was founded as the capital of Lanna Thai (Kingdom of One Million Rice fields) in 1296. The word Chiang means walled city, and the original city was surrounded by a square wall with sides of nearly 2km. Today the historical innercity still shows these landmarks. 

	The city is a mixture of cosy places, busy markets and hystorical temples. On the local markets one can buy food all day long and often the hot air is filled with a strange mixture of all kinds of prepaired food and exhaust emissions from the cars and taxi's .
	The city is not yet as busy as Bangkok but it slowly going that direction. There is a lot of traffic and  cars and motorcycles are not yet that environment friendly so air pollution is quite noticable with people having tissues before their mouth ans some people with long sleeves because they react allergic.
	There are over 300 temples in Chiang Mai

 

	Just a little out of town, nature is becoming very prominent with extended ricefields ....
	and a real jungle in the mountainregion

The championships were rather good organized.
The delegations were lodged in 2 nice hotels at walking distance of eachother and the transport to the competition and traininghall (about 20 minutes) went at least every half hour. The hotel also had a large swimmingpool, but the weather didn't let us enjoy it too much cause the rainseason was very prominent.Informationdesks were present all day long  and there were no major problems.

The training and competition facilities were very good, since they used the 700th Anniversary Sports Complex  that was constructed in 1995 for the SEA Games just like in 1997.
The training hall was very big with around 50 platforms and Chinese barbells, and located just in front of the competition hall. Enough water was provided which was very necessary for training in a very humid and hot atmosphere without air-conditioning.  

	The training hall
	The Warm-up with ten platforms was not enormuos, but big enough .
	The competition hall was modern and nice,
	and the audience provided a nice atmosphere, especially when a home athlete was competing.

  
In terms of the number of athletes and suspense of the competitions these championships were very successful.. 
About 245 (176 in 2006) women and 388 (298 in 2006)  men from 89 (80 in 2006) countries were competing.
These World Championships were the second Olympic qualification event and as the main qualification is mainly by team performance, a lot of full teams were present.
Full results can be found on IWF website.

My 6th senior world championship did not work out as planned. I had an extremely good preparation, lifting higher weights than ever. So i wasn't just dreaming when planning to break my total record (277.5) already on second attempts (126+152). 

With as much as 47 lifters there were A, B, C en D-groups and I had to lift in the B-group on a good time. I felt quite strong in the warm-up, but I had a platform that wasn't completely level and I missed my last two warm-up attempts with 120. I started with a pretty good 121. Very confident I asked for 126, a weight I never snatched in Europeans or World championships. With a very dense level, I had to wait 15 attempts with some people following themselfs, so more than 15 minutes passed between my first and second attempt! So I was forced to take a few warm-up attempts and again I missed because of the platform. My second attempt with 126 was not at all heavy but it lacked some feeling and I missed in front. In the third attempt however I was pretty sure to have succeeded but in the end I also just missed in front...

That was pretty much the end of my competition. Ofcourse I could try to make a good clean and jerk, but my goal was to qualify for the Olympics with a total of at least 280kg and that was also wat had been asked by the Olympic committee  and my sportsemployer BLOSO.
So I really lost all my motivation and above that I had the first clean in my group, while my snatch was rather at the end  (126 would have given 14th place). So I only had time to take 5 warm-up lifts and apperently it wasn't enough cause the first clean really hurted my patella tendinite that much that I had todrop it. The second one I did so carefully that I came up rather difficult but I jerked it. Without any motivation I then cleaned 151 but didn't come up (little bit strange cause it never was a problem in training). 

Anyway my total of 268 kg (bw 61.17 kg) and 27th place was really bad and dissapointing. (23rd place in snatch,  27th in cl&jerk). 

It must be said, the level has gone up after a decrease since 1999. The World Championships in Athens 1999 were an absolute record in numbers of participants and level. It was the first time the team qualification for the Olympics had been set up and many countries had come with a full team (afterwards many countries realised it wasn't possible to get into the 25 so the weaker countries stopped sending full teams), and it was the time when WADA wasn't so much present so the level was sometimes surprisingly high. 
These world championships were the first to nearly equal those of 1999 in some aspects. The numbers of athletes (388 men and 245 women) was nearly as much as the record output from 1999 (395 men and  283 women) and in the mid region the level also came similar to that of Athens, pointing to an increasing density of the results. See also the statistics I've done.

And yes it is clear, nowadays one lost attempts make you slide down the ranking a lot. With 278 I would have gained ten places and  280 kg total would have given 14th place. 

My competition pictures:

	My first succesful snatch with 121 kg. (this picture was taken by the French team)
	Concentrating for my second snatch with 126... (this picture was taken by the French team)
	My unfortunate snatch attempt with 126 kg, clearly high enough but just a little in front. This picture is taken by Robby Macklem.
	The pull of my 147 kg clean, also taken by Robby Macklem.
	.... and catching it in the squat position (picture by French team)
	and finally the jerk.

Training&Competition shots:

	Ruth Kassirye, who became second best European lifter in the 58 kg class with 209 kg total.
	Mita Overvliet (NED, -63kg), known as the organisator of the Thor Cup in Iceland. I was helping a hand in coaching her, cause there was no coach from the Netherlands.
	Anna Everi (FIN,-63) with a new personal record clean&jerk of 90 kg
	And yes, she was very happy with that. My very good friend Kari Kinnunen, who also helped coaching me, could also be pleased.
	The sensation of the World Championships, Rybakou's 187 kg snatch in world record in the -85 kg.
	Mu Shuangshuang, 135 kg bodyweigth, took silver in +75 kg class women.
	HOANG Anh Taun, -56 kg, from Vietnam injured his back and got eliminated instead of catching an overall medall.
	Li Zheng (CHN, - 56kg),  took the gold in the snatch (130kg) but got defeated in the clean&jerk and total by North Korean Cha Kum Chol.

Thailand Shots:

	Three-wheeled Motorcycle taxis, "Tuk-Tuks", are a common -not very safe- typical way of transport.
	Here we managed to fit with 5 in one Tuk Tuk :-)
	These guys from Caviar TV, folowed me for a Belgian TV program "the Olympic dream"
	I did an excursion with my friend Kari Kinnunen. It started with an elephanttrip from Mae Taeng Elephant Camp through the jungle, followed by an ox-car ride ...
	and a Bamboo-"rafting" at the Mae Taeng River.

Some variuos shots: 

	Two Russian Olympia winners, Chemerkin and David Rigert!
	Two of my French trainingpartners and friends, Benji Hennequin (-85 kg) and Ali Moujoud (-77kg) posing with two Thai girls from the organisation.
	Finnish team
	Portia Vries, -48 kg, from South Africa.

I will try to put some more pictures on my flickr website, but in the meantime you can already enjoy some on Kari's flickr and
Canadian Rob Macklem took also many nice pictures that can be found on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/38313689@N00/

A few pictures of the French team can be found on their website and Thai girls also made a slide show