The teens pulled the lion's whiskers

Teens have pulled the lion's whiskers - read more on www.szon.hu 

The lack of successful and accomplished adults was partly compensated by the young weightlifters.

On Saturday and Sunday, 18 and 19 November, the participants of the National Weightlifting Championships competed in ten men's and ten women's categories in Nyíregyháza. A total of sixteen defending champions competed, with the local NYVSC also fielding several athletes at the championships held at the Athletics Centre.

A perfect venue was provided

- There have been national championships here before, and it is a tribute to the work of the organisers, Attila Feri and his colleagues, that Nyíregyháza could host the event again. During the construction of the Athletics Centre, it was important to ensure that it was not only used by athletes and to create ideal conditions for organising similar competitions," said Dr. Attila Ulrich, Deputy Mayor of Nyíregyháza, during the opening ceremony.

The competition was of particular importance, as the Olympics will be held in 2024, and those who stand a chance of qualifying showed themselves in Nyíregyháza.

The first day of the national championships started with a bang, as all three gold medals in the morning programme went to Fiszej SE from Debrecen. It is not easy to cope with the full name (Association of Young People for a Healthy Future), but it is worth mentioning that the club was founded in 2017 by Zoltán Kecskés, the eighth Olympic and three-time European champion and former fifth weightlifter, who is also the head coach. Both his eighteen-year-old daughter Karina (55 kg) and Laura Richter (49 kg) defended their titles, while in the lightest category (45 kg), the fifteen-year-old Gercsák Enikő, still in her teens, came out on top.

It is telling that sixteen-year-old Lénárd Zolnai (61 kg) from Oroszlány can now claim to be a two-time adult champion, and among the "big ones", Noel Fekécs (the only competitor in the 55 kg category), who won his first gold medal, only turned fifteen in the summer. Thus, the average age of the five lifters who triumphed in the bottom two men's and bottom three women's weight classes was seventeen, and six of the eleven firsts on Saturday went to teenagers. At the end of the day, Noel Nagy (89 kg) helped Kecskemét TE catch Fiszej SE in the gold medals, while 20-year-old Cintia Árva (59 kg) took the podium for the sixth time in a row.

On the second day of the national championships, the gold medallists won by a large or huge margin, with three men - Levente Lucz (102 kg), Ferenc Gyurkovics (109 kg) and Péter Nagy (+109 kg) - crossing the three-mass barrier, and two women - Laura Horváth (76 kg) and Veronika Mitykó (87 kg) - going over the two-mass barrier. 

After the women's 71kg, 76kg, 81kg, 87kg and +87kg were all in the same "package", a prestige fight was held between Laura Horváth (76kg), who triumphed at the August Crossfit Games, the unofficial World Crossfit Championships, and Veronika Mitykó (87kg), who is still hoping to qualify for the Olympics.

Laura Croatia brilliant

Horváth's performance should be mentioned in particular because he also appeared on the weightlifting stage in 2021, he participated in the European Championships in Moscow, but on the next day of his competition he unexpectedly left the Russian capital, for which Imre Dobos, the president of the federation, initiated disciplinary proceedings against him, suspending his right to compete. Here we turn back to the present, because he got his licence back at the beginning of this year, and he came back even more determined, if only in a good mood - so much so that he improved the Hungarian record in the clean and jerk to 117 kilos at the Savaria Cup in March. In Nyíregyháza, he performed three flawless snatches, and the first miss on 114 kilos did not break him, but instead of correcting, he immediately went to 117 kilos, and on the third attempt - after a two-minute rest - he raised the catch record to 120 kilos. His performance was all the better for the fact that he reached 215 kilos, the same as Mityko, two categories above him, who improved his personal best by one kilo.

Peter Nagy at the top of the all-time ranking

In the men's event, Péter Nagy (+109 kg) and Ferenc Gyurkovics (109 kg) continued to "turn the page", the former winning his 19th title with just one routine each, the latter his 16th. Having overtaken László Buronyi, who once won 15 gold medals, the 40-year-old Gyurkovics is now alone in second place in the all-time rankings, led by Péter Nagy.

All in all, a well-organised national championship was held in our county, which was covered by several media, and in addition to the fact that it was broadcast live in the streaming format, as required by the modern times, and that the youngsters proved that there is a lot of potential in the domestic youth.

Details of the names and results can be found at www.szon.hu.