Piece of the Platform – Volume 3
Welcome to piece of the platform. As Athletes ourselves and as Technical Officials, we’re really lucky that we get to spend time with, know, work or train alongside some really fantastic people from within the weightlifting community. We’re even luckier still that some of those people have agreed to a take part in our mini interviews, that we’ve coined ‘Piece of the Platform’.
We’ve reached out to Coaches, Technical Officials, BWL staff, Athletes and volunteers, and we’ve asked them all some variation of the same 4 questions. The answers we’ve had back have been inspiring, funny, helpful and thought provoking – so we’ve collated them here, as an addendum to the learning resources, to pool that collective knowledge and advice in the hope that you’ll enjoy reading them just as much as we did.
Anushka Bovill- Competitive Athlete
Want to know more about Anushka?
@anushkalilybovill
What’s your favourite thing about weightlifting as an athlete?
Weightlifting allowed me the space to become who I wanted to be. I’ve always been taught to be as small as possible and I mean that in every sense, don’t talk to much, don’t have too many opinions, don’t gain too much weight etc etc. when I first watched the girls in the back area, they were just themselves, they were whole human beings who were unapologetically strong af!! I loved that and I want to emulate that energy.
What one piece of advice would you give to athletes about competition?
You have more time than you think in comp!! That whole minute is yours, you have to create space in your mind to be able to calm the nerves and block everything else out. Your warmup is also really important so just stay focused on yourself, what anyone else does is out of your control. Take a breath, and do what you’ve been doing in training – you got this!
What do you think BWL and the Technical Officials do well, and what could we do better?
My experience with technical officials has always been quite positive! They’ve always been happy to explain any given decision and for the most part I have agreed with decisions made. The only thing I would say that could be better is the consistency between decisions – there has been times where even I’ve thought in my head ‘probably not going to get that’ and then got it (which is great for me 😂) but not for overall consistency and quality of performance
If you could ask your favourite lifter one question, who are they and what would that be?
I’m actually so fortunate to know some of my favourite weightlifters – in fact a lot of them told me to keep coming back and have given me such good advice of the last couple of years – so I’ll go international with this one! I would probably say Kiana Elliot 🇦🇺 and that would be how to improve on speed under the bar? If you’re wanting to see (in my opinion) one of the best techniques in snatch currently on a world stage – go check her out 🫶🏻