Weightlifting hopes come crashing

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Eileen Cikamatana of Fiji shows her emotions after winning the gold medal for the Women’s 90+90kg Final during Weightlifting on day fi ve of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. Picture: GOLD COAST 2018 COMMONWEALTH GAMES/FILE

AS we came into 2018 at the end of 2017 hopes were sky-high that another sport had joined rugby union as gold medal contenders for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

But all those dreams have come to naught as the ongoing feud between Fiji Weightlifting Association and Levuka weighlifters became a festering sore.

Sevens rugby became the first sport to win a gold medal, let alone a medal, in the Olympics when Englishman Ben Ryan coached Fiji into a gold medal victory in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016.

In 2017 the sport of weight-lifting produced Levuka lass Eileen Cikamatana, who proved herself and she has already lifted, breaking, and setting new records in world youth meets, Oceania, Commonwealth and Pacific Mini Games meets.

She hauled in another bag of gold medals in the Vanuatu’s Mini Games setting two new Commonwealth records. Paul Coffa and his officials have been bubbling with excitement over her talent.

However, she had resigned from Fiji Weightlifting in June and sought to represent another country.

But that will happen after the Olympics.

Even if she returns now there is no guarantee that she would be in the best form for competition as a lot of emotional stress is also involved.

Whatever the causes were, has put all the good names Fijian sports and Olympic gold aspirations of the queen of hearts, Cikamatana in the trash bin.

The dreams of a lifetime of sporting people, the money, time and effort used to build up this raw talent into a world champion has been wasted and gone down the drain.

Whoever is responsible should be taken to task.

Her win would have made one of the best sporting stories in history after having been plucked out of the blue through the influence of a friend and instantly become a world champion.

The win would have been the greatest tool of empowering our youth and young women and the women’s fight for recognition by organisations like the Women’s Crisis Centre.

According to trainer Paul Coffa we may have missed out on qualifying for the 2020 Olympics because Eileen had missed the qualifying tournaments. But if there’s still a chance of way and quick drastic measures should be taken to resolve the crisis and quickly get her gold campaign back on track.

Then again the Olympic gold medal is the ultimate prize for human endeavor and exemplary character and performance. It is the final product of team work of officials and organisations and a lot of emotions, mental and physical preparation are invested into the gold campaign.

Everybody involved in a sport to birth real champions make sacrifice whether it is time, money, family or even personal pride.

Humility is the key and unity and hardwork form the launching pad to achieving success.

The sport may have talent but without these champion characters and winning culture they do not deserve to be flying any national flag in Tokyo or any other games beyond.

One of the other sport that is quickly improving is volleyball. Gold medals in the Oceania Games and the state-of-the art preparations that they are adopting promises a big future for the sports.

Volleyball has always been the other popular pastime apart from touch rugby that draws young men and women together every afternoon in patches of ground in the communities.

Touch rugby is responsible for all the ambidextrous skills that make Fijian sevens rugby players unique and this has borne fruit in Fiji’s dominance in the sport internationally.

However, volleyball is also played as intensively in every corner of the country in big cities, village, settlements and islands but had not made the same impact on the international scene.

But all that is behind us as the current administrators have embarked on taking the sport to another level, using modern
training methods and we look forward to 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa with great expectations.

In athletics the return of former Pacific sprint king Banuve Tabakaucoro into the sport is great news after having spent the last two years playing sevens rugby and even making the Fiji Sevens team.

In school sports Ratu Kadavulevu School created sporting history by winning the world schools rugby tournament in Japan
beating teams like South Africa and New Zealand, won the SANNIX 7s and almost made another clean sweep of the Coke
Zero Deans competition.

Their under-17 team lost in the semi-final to Marist and Queen Victoria won the U17 final and have the honour of defending
the world title won by RKS in Japan.

Apart from rugby RKS also grabbed the Coca-Cola Games boys’ title after so many years playing bridesmaid to Marist.

The girls’ competition was convincingly won by Adi Cakobau School.

Amateur boxing is another sport that has shown improvement to return Fiji to when we ruled the sport in the Pacific.

Winston Hill has sought the help of professional trainers in Australia and we can expect gold medals in the Pacific Games and even a medal in the 2020 Olympics.

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