Watching the 2012 Olympic Games: Weightlifting
How it works
There are 15 different weight categories for the sport, eight for men and seven for women with each event featuring two types of lift: the snatch, and the clean and jerk. Two hundred and sixty athletes (170 men and 90 women) will compete in this event with some of the strongest competitors lifting more than three times their own body weight.
Who’s hot
The German Matthias Stainer will be hoping to add to the gold medal he won in the +105kg category in Beijing but he will have to beat Evgeny Chigishev of Russia and Behdad Salimikordasiabi of Iran. In the women’s +75kg category Tatiana Kashirina of Russia is likely to be one of the favourites for gold.
Home hopes
A teenager actually offers one of Great Britain’s best medal hopes in the weightlifting. Zoe Smith has already broken over 100 records in her career so far and is hoping to play a big part in front of her home crowd at London 2012. She recently quit college to focus her energy on achieving Olympic qualification after winning a bronze medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India.
The road to London
- 11-17 April 2011 European Championships in Kazan
- 5-13 November 2011 World Championships/Olympic qualification event in Paris
- 10-11 December 2011 Olympic test event in London
The stage
The ExCeL in London’s Docklands will be the venue for the weightlifting events in 2012. Its five arenas will host a total of 13 Olympic and Paralympic sports and will also stage several test events this year
What they say
“The chance to compete in front of my home crowd is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I want to be able to get myself into the best shape possible” –
Zoe Smith, British weightlifter and Commonwealth bronze medallist
Did you know?
There will be 1,630 discs for the athletes to use in the weightlifting competition. The discs range in weight from 5kg to 25kg. The heaviest individual weight lifted at an Olympic Games was at Athens in 2004. Iran’s Hossein Rezazadeh clean-and-jerked 263.5kg – that’s the approximate weight of five flyweight boxers
Competition dates
28 July-7 August
Ticket prices
£20-£175
Tempted to be there? Sign up now
You can apply for Olympic tickets until 26 April. Visit http://www.tickets.london2012.com/
Tickets to watch Olympic events are not sold on a first-come-first-served basis – applications can be submitted at any stage in the 42-day period from 15 March to 26 April. There is no advantage in applying on the first day or the last day
Online payment is exclusively by Visa debit card, credit card or pre-paid card. Alternatively you can submit a paper application form which is available in Lloyds TSB branches and pay by cheque or postal order as well as Visa
Customers may not get all the tickets they apply for owing to high demand. Once an application is processed, customers cannot change their orders and must have the funds to pay for the tickets they have been allocated
This is a fair process and a fair ballot will be run for oversubscribed events where demand exceeds supply
The application process for tickets for the Paralympic Games will begin on 9 September 2011 and tickets for the London 2012 Festival (part of the Cultural Olympiad) in October 2011
