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Two local athletes have been showing the strength in women by shining bright in weightlifting and bench pressing competitions, after under a year of training.
Rachel Leck (22) and Charlotte Neale (14) are among the strongest women in Jersey and regularly pump iron with another eight women, in a bid to become Jersey's first ever team of Olympic female weightlifters.
Until April 2018, the pair didn't know each other. They were brought together as part of the 'Power to Podium' Programme of the Jersey Sport Foundation (JSF), which aims to prove that Jersey can produce athletes able to compete at high level with a good coaching environment and the right system behind the athletes.
Both have been scoring high since their early competitions last year, with Rachel, a Para Powerlifter, qualifying for the British Classic Bench Press Championships and Charlotte lifting nearly double the weight she needed to qualify for the British Championships.
Last week, both Rachel and Charlotte were away in the UK competing and both had a pretty successful run. Despite having cerebral palsy, which qualifies her for para sports, Rachel scored a Silver medal in a mainstream competition.
"It felt good to bring something back," Rachel said, after what she describes as a long day, starting with weigh-ins at 08:00, followed by warm-up, her lifts, and then a lot of waiting around. "You have to watch all the other lifts before they do the presentation," she explained.
Despite the big achievement, Rachel celebrated rather modestly with only a big box of donuts and a "massive dinner" before retuning to her normal routine.
While she only started training under a year ago, Rachel says her recent success is the result of regular training, three times a week. "The consistency comes through," she said.
Pictured: Rachel Leck with her trophy.
She confessed that she finds bench presses a lot less complicated than para lifting. "In bench press, you have your feet down, so you have more drive through and you are more stable. In paralifting, your feet are up on the bench, it's a lot harder. Your arms have to be equal when you lift, whereas in bench press you can have one arm going up and then the other.
"You also get commands in bench press, which means you can just listen and do what you are told. In paralifting, you have to time the press yourself. But in every competition, I look at the bench and think to myself 'You just got to push to the ceiling.'"
Like her teammates, Rachel is keen to prove that bench lifting and powerlifting are not just for men. "Definitely not," she says. "The female athletes are showing the strength in women. There are hundreds of clubs in the UK and there's always a great atmosphere at the competitions."
At only 14, Rachel's teammate Charlotte Neale is proving that strength can be found at any age. She took Gold and scored a Champion title in the U15 category at the English National Junior Weightlifting Championships.
"To be honest it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet," Charlotte told Express,"but becoming English Champion has motivated me to work even harder because I know now that it definitely pays off.
"When I first started I didn’t know that everything would happen so quickly, all I knew was that I was going to do lots of competitions to prepare me for a big competition like national championships, but I never realized I was going to go to one let alone win it in my first year of training."
Pictured: Charlotte Neale became a weightlifting champion last weekend.
Charlotte said that ahead of the competition, she started the day with a "very big English breakfast." She then had to watch the younger lifter groups and the under 15 boys compete before her category was called.
"After that I started warming up for my snatch. In the warm up, I actually dropped the bar on my knee about five minutes before my first competition lift."
The young athlete said the competition was a "mental challenge" due to a tight battle with "a very strong girl." Charlotte however did well with a total of 119kgs in her "clean and jerks" and 99kgs in her "snatches, with gave her two English and British records.
"She keeps surprising us," said Linda Neale, Charlotte's mum, and the young prodigy is not looking to slow down anytime soon. She has her eyes set on a European title, and hopes to compete in the European Youth championships 2019 in Romania for Team GB. "This competition will be a big change and very hard so I will very happy to be selected for it," she confessed.
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