Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
CHALK. Massaged in, scrubbed in, lovingly, hand on hand, like a surgeon with antibacterial soap. These are the last few seconds, when it is just you and your mind. In a minute, it's also the bar, and all that weight, and the audience, and the announcer. And everything. Lifting can weigh
heavy on the mindSo different than every day at the gym. So different than practice, when the amounts don't matter. When it's easier, just get that weight up, and over your head.
But it's a different feeling, when weightlifting is official.
"My biggest problem is I got a weak mind," said Gary Kawamura. He turns 55 this year, owns Masters world records and has been powerlifting competitively for more than 30 years.
His mind, most definitely, is not weak. But that just shows how tough it is in those last few seconds, when mind matters more.
Kawamura tried to set another world record yesterday, at the Hawaii State Weightlifting Championships. He couldn't do it. He'd lifted the weight easily in practice. But yesterday his body failed him, or his mind did, and he lost control, losing it, losing it, gravity pulling his weakening arms backward, from over his head to behind it.
He let go then, ducked under the bar as the weight fell, a limb-threatening limbo move. And Kawamura, this sport gives him joy, you can see it, was smiling again before the weight hit the ground.
He has fun with this. It's good fun to watch him. "You got to enjoy it, ah," he said later, grinning again.
There was Tommy Kono, the Olympic legend, perhaps America's greatest powerlifter, front and center as a judge. He lit up like a day at the beach, every time he could tell a lifter that he or she had done it, and could now drop the bar.
It bounced, every time, the weights springing back up like a rubber ball.
This was at Windward Mall, and the lifters psyched up in front of a "Snackerdoodles," under the watchful eye of a surfing Icee Bear. At one point (and remember, this was a weightlifting competition) the song on the background music was "Cool Jerk."
They seemed skinny, for weightlifters. One was a young girl. At one point one found himself squatting, on the rug, with 248 pounds across his chest. He fought his way to his feet with a mighty "OOooop!"
We're told that David Isaacs took up the sport in his 40s because he couldn't get a tee time. He said it was a longer story than that. He'd been a high school wrestler, intramural jock, an adult always down at the park with the guys. He moved on to karate when his gang moved on. Then he was into competitive weightlifting ("on a lark," he said), but the Aloha State Games events were dropped that year.
"I was in shape, and thinking 'Oh what the hell I gonna do?' " he said.
That's when he found Olympic-style weightlifting, eight years ago.
Yesterday, he made all of his lifts, and so Kono smiled several times.
Kawamura never stopped.
Not everyone can do this, he said. "It's like a blessing," he said.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com