3 silver medals for Peters

It was a great day in the weightlifting office for Luisa Peters who won three silver medals in her competition at the Wallis and Futuna Pacific Mini Games.

Peters lifted in the 75kg plus women’s division on Wednesday where the division was combined with the 75kg women’s division as there were only three lifters in Peters’ division.

In the snatch competition – Peters easily lifted her first attempt of 84kg and bettering her previous personal best snatch lift of 82kg.

In her second snatch attempt – Peters lifted a whopping 88kg to set yet another higher personal best lift.

In her final attempt in the snatch the bar was loaded with 92kg – a lift that proved too much for the rising Pacific weightlifter.

Peters dropped the lift but kept her head up with words of encouragement ringing out from the small but vocal group of Cook Islands supporters.

Her second lift of 88kg was enough to win her the silver medal in the snatch division.

The gold went to Samoa’s lifter with a snatch lift of 96kg.

In the clean and jerk competition – Peters lifted 104kg to better her previous personal best lift by 1kg.

The young lifter then attempted 110kg in her second lift and landed it sending her support team into celebration mode as again Peters set a new higher personal best clean and jerk lift.

In her final lift – Peters attempted to clean and jerk 115kg, however, it proved too much for her.

In fact, a week before the competition, Peters dropped her first attempt of 115kg on her right knee and spent time out of training to let the massive swelling heal.

Despite the injury, Peters maintained a positive outlook on her competition that no doubt lead her to winning three silver medals – the third coming from registering the second highest total in her division of 198kg – an improve of 15kg in just one month of training at the Weightlifting Institute in New Caledonia.

Her institute coach and weightlifting legend Paul Coffer had nothing by positive words about his young protg.

“She should have got it,” Coffer said of Peters missed lifts.

“She was there and she did great lifts.”

His only criticism, if it can be called that, was that Peters had a ‘sweet life’ alluding to the young lifter needing to be tougher.

Apart from that, Coffer sees a great lifting future for the 20-year old athlete.

“She is very talented. She is quick to learn. She can be the best in the Commonwealth one day.”

Coffer said confidently that he believed that if she continued to train at the institute – she would be snatching 100kg.

“In 12 months – she can be the next Commonwealth champ.”

For Peters – it was an enjoyable competition.

She feels she did her best this time round and knows with more hard work she can achieve her bigger goals of winning medals at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games.

Peters is grateful for the support she received from her friends and families back home as well as her weightlifting brothers and sisters at the institute and the support from members of the Team Cook Islands at the Wallis and Futuna Mini Games.

Peters three silver medals takes Team Cook Islands medal count to four including one gold won by discus thrower Tereapii Tapoki.