It’s been a successful Olympics for Thai weightlifting, and two of their lifters dominated the women’s 58kg weight class. Sukanya Srisurat made all three of her snatches and ended with 110kg in that portion of the competition to secure a new Olympic record on her way to a gold medal.
The final podium for the women’s 58kg class is as follows.
1. Sukanya Srisurat (Thailand)
2. Pimsiri Sirikaew (Thailand)
3. Kuo Hsing-Chun (Taipei)
Notably absent from the competition was Azerbaijan’s Boyanka Kostova, who holds the world record in the weight class in the snatch (112, two above Srisurat’s best lift in Rio) and total (252kg, 12 kilos above Srisurat’s gold medal total). Kostova failed a doping retest from her London samples and is provisionally suspended from international weightlifting.
Srisurat finished 5th at the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships in Houston. Sirikaew was the reigning silver medalist from the 2012 London Games, giving her two second place Olympic finishes in the weight class. Hsing-Chun was the bronze medalist in Houston and is the 2013 World Champion at 58kg.
Srisurat’s Olympic record snatch gave her an 8 kilogram lead heading into the clean & jerk portion of the event, and she made her first two clean & jerks to end with a 240kg total. Kuo Hsing-Chun attempted an Olympic record 139kg clean & jerk to take the gold but failed the lift.
So far, Thailand leads the medal count in weightlifting with 4 total, but there’s plenty more action to go, and only 4 of 15 total weight classes have finished competition in Rio.
Tia-Clair Toomey — who has finished 2nd at The Reebok CrossFit Games the past two years — represented Australia lifting as a 58kg. She totaled 189 kilos after snatching 82kg and clean & jerking 107kg, ranking 14th out of 16 lifters in the weight class.
Featured image: IWF on Instagram (@IWFnet)