The Olympics can often act as a kind of irradiating superhero beam, a light that either shrivels or ennobles depending on where it lands. While some sports – yes, you, tennis – seem to shrink in its glare, others swell and bloom. Few more so than weightlifting, the sport of grunts and jerks and herniated wails of triumph, which has been one of the surprise hits of the opening week. And which was again received with great thrumming excitement in the amphitheatre-scale splendour of the ExCel arena on Monday as Great Britain's Zoe Smith and the rest of the women's 58kg group took their turn on the main stage.
Smith, a local girl from Greenwich just across the water, walked out to a grand pageantry of flags and shrill, rolling cheers, clearly thrilled to be up on stage alongside her fellow category B lifters, the more uncompromisingly squat of whom she looms over by a good head. As had always seemed likely to be the case, there was no Olympic medal for Smith, but there was the consolation of a fine British record performance in the clean and jerk to follow a disappointing snatch round for the 18-year-old, who is already Britain's finest ever female weightlifter.
A Toulouse et a Bordeaux, le maillot avait une vraie valeur.Perhaps the home Olympic lure of this charming and photogenic local lifter had proved simply too great to resist. Despite her own frank assessment of her chances, there was still a rather unfairly onerous degree of pre-competition expectation lingering around Smith. Hers was not a false modesty, however. Albeit four years from now, with women's weightlifters tending to peak in their mid to late twenties, Smith's talent may yet have reached a more rarified plateau.
Smith, a local girl from Greenwich just across the water, walked out to a grand pageantry of flags and shrill, rolling cheers, clearly thrilled to be up on stage alongside her fellow category B lifters, the more uncompromisingly squat of whom she looms over by a good head. As had always seemed likely to be the case, there was no Olympic medal for Smith, but there was the consolation of a fine British record performance in the clean and jerk to follow a disappointing snatch round for the 18-year-old, who is already Britain's finest ever female weightlifter.
A Toulouse et a Bordeaux, le maillot avait une vraie valeur.Perhaps the home Olympic lure of this charming and photogenic local lifter had proved simply too great to resist. Despite her own frank assessment of her chances, there was still a rather unfairly onerous degree of pre-competition expectation lingering around Smith. Hers was not a false modesty, however. Albeit four years from now, with women's weightlifters tending to peak in their mid to late twenties, Smith's talent may yet have reached a more rarified plateau.
没有评论:
发表评论