In the tiny country of Luxembourg, the Western European Equipped & Classic Powerlifting Championships 2017 recently took place in Hamm, an area of Luxembourg City.
We’ve seen some pretty impressive lifts coming out of the competition, but -63kg Italian raw powerlifter Carola Garra, who was last year’s junior champion, has been making waves with a mighty bench press of 133 kilograms (293 pounds), setting a new junior IPF world record.
According to the IPF Garra weighed in at 62.53 kilograms, making this bench press about 2.13 times her bodyweight. To take the world record in the lift, she’d have to make 145.5 kilograms (320.7 pounds), a record currently held by Johanna Aguinaga, a powerlifter from Ecuador.
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During the meet she squatted and deadlifted 165 kilograms (363.8 pounds), bringing her total to 463 kilograms (1,020.7 pounds).
The squat was a junior world record. The bench was a junior world record. Her total was a junior world record.
This gave her first place with a massive lead of 85.5 kilograms over second place finisher Sandra Emonts from Germany.
In an Instagram caption, she recently wrote (in Italian),
Only today, after four days, do I have time to think about what happened, the joy of this competition.
SQUAT 165 kg (WR)
BENCH PRESS 133 kg (WR)
DEADLIFT 165 kg
TOTAL 463 kg (WR)I finally reached the 500 Wilks I wanted.
On top of the new record, she was the only raw athlete in the entire competition — male or female — to come home with a Wilks score of over 500. (It was actually 500.09.) The second highest score for a female lifter was 447.94, for France’s Andrea Durand, and the highest Wilks for a male was 480.38, from France’s Bastien Poyet.
France did a phenomenal job at this year’s Western European Championships, coming in first on both the male raw and female raw divisions with regard to total Wilks points earned.
Congratulations to Carola Garra, the now two-time junior European champion.
Featured image via @carolagarra on Instagram.