Ventspils Atlants 2008

Back from the IUKL-competition and European Championships in Ventspils 22-25/8. It was great and many experiences, learnings, and nice people. In fact, it feels like I have been away for weeks, rather than just four days. I will only scribble down some impressions so it does not become a book.

People
In about 200 competitors and a good number of judges and functionnaries. Ginko, Fuglev, Robert Innus, Lochmels, Kalle Puss… several of the big gs-personalities were there. No comments necessary really. During one IUKL-meeting we were visited by Mr Razkov from the International GS federation. If I understood it correctly, he had been among the ones who first organized kettlebell lifting into a formal sport in 1962. C’est quelque chose ("that's something").

I met my old Finnish friends and also made new ones like Paul Tucker, Jason from Ireland, Vigantis from Lithuania, and Johan from France.

Competition
One of the organizers meant that competitions should also be like ”a big party.” This was indeed a big kettlebell party. Very well organized. There were IUKL-busses between the airport in Riga and Ventspils. Ginko, Svetlana Rukina, and many others had worked hard to arrange with lodging and logistics for all the arrivals.
Sweet little girls with signs led in the different national teams (the Swedish too :-). There was music shows, and juggling demonstrations in between gs-sets. It seemed like the audience also enjoyed the events.

I did not pay a nickle for participating, but will contact them to see so there has not been a mistake. Normally, I think there is a fee for participating in competitions?

Then, of course, there were so many good lifters. Girevoy sport also makes a very nice spectator sport. For example, there was a very exciting snatch set were two top lifters raced against one another and the clock. It was even just up till the last second when one guy got 153 and the other guy scored 154 repetitions. With 32kgs…

Got nice pics from Kukka

My contribution
I made the 85kg category. First the scale showed 85,1kg. When I removed my sturdy metal wrist-watch the scale dropped to 84,9kg.

I lifted in between two amateur lifters from Ukraine and Lithuania − guess who won…

Well, I got 15 jerks and 46 snatches with the 24kgs. It is probably the worst result in the entire competition. I had foreseen that, but my thing was rather to get started competing and learn how to compete. I want to bring some more Swedish men, and women, to Ventspils and other competitions (the organizers explicitly asked me for this). So candidates, now you know that you probably will not be the last ones regarding numbers.

An interesting side effect might be that I am actually the first Swede ever to have competed in a formally recognized girevoy sport event. Please, let me know if I am wrong. A buddy sms.ed "First Swede and last. Not bad."

I had no idea really what my results would be like. Would I get nervous, tense up and get very few jerk reps? Would my technique in a stressful situation be okeyed by the judge, or not? I had a nightmare vision of myself doing jerk after jerk, but the meter staying on zero points because of unclean lockouts, or else.

Jerks: I am kind of happy with the jerks. I made over five minutes, and also had 5, or 7, ”no count” reps. That might seem odd that I am happy with that, but I think that it shows that the judge was pretty strict. Thus, I have 15 “real” jerk reps cleared by an official girevoy sport judge. Before, I had none.

Interesting, I think that my total jerks (the bad ones included) is 20, or 22, which is about my personal record in training.

Tactically, I think that I was too afraid of panicking and doing my jerks too quickly. So, I took care to rest in rack. But maybe, I rested too much and lost strength in rack. As well, I might have stayed in lockout too long, just to make sure the rep would be counted.

Snatches: here, I am annoyed with myself. In training, I have made over sixty snatches several times. With my recent jerk training with 24kgs, as well as heavy swings, in combination with the fact that 20/25 snatches per arm has felt easy in training − I thought that I would cash in a snatch number of at least 60 reps.
But alas! I had not checked out the routines for preparing the bells. I thought that there would be prepared bells up front (i.e. with chalk). But, when I came up to the platform my bell was without chalk. My grip was chalked but already moist from warming up. The bell’s handle really smooth and shiny. Well, to make it short, the handle became very slippery immediately – like it was oiled… My palms did not even feel warm after snatching – like I had not snatched at all.
Well, again I think this experience sorts under the “learn how to compete” theme. It was a good handlebell, well-balanced, thin handle. But, I had not taken the time to prepare it for lifting. Do again, do better! J

Here are some more nice photos from the event taken by Hillar Uudevald from Estonia: http://art.tartu.ee/~illi/sangpomm/vncpls8/

I will talk more about the Ventspils events the weeks to come. Another, very important, upcoming post will be a review of Paul Tucker's coming Downunder Guide to Girevoy Sport.