‘It’s the thrill of putting 80 kilos over your head’

Clones woman Molly Coffey O’Connor broke the national record at the Senior National Olympic Weightlifting Championships in Waterford in early July.

The 21 year old claimed the U23 record for Clean and Jerk in the 63kg category by successfully completing a 100kg lift. She also broke the total record in that category for the combination of her Clean and Jerk and Snatch lift, and took second place overall in the competition, which took place in SETU (South East Technological University).

Nationally in weightlifting, Molly is currently ranked the number one U23 female and is in the top five for women overall.

Molly has been living in Clones for almost ten years. Her family moved to the west Monaghan town from France, where they had an art gallery, to receive support after her mother fell ill with Lyme disease. She completed a year in primary school here before moving to Largy College for secondary school. After school, she attended DCU for a year to study international relations.

A relative newcomer to the sport, Molly started weightlifting when she was around 17 years old. She previously played GAA, with Monaghan for a year at U14, where she started playing at half back before moving to the full forward line.

However, it was perhaps her background in throwing that best laid the foundations for her career in weightlifting.

Growing up, throwing was something that Molly was familiar with. Her mother, Lorraine Coffey, was a European champion in javelin.

Molly's primary discipline was discus, with some shot put thrown in, before her interest was piqued by weightlifting.

Her weekly gym sessions would regularly incorporate the two competitive weightlifting lifts; the snatch and the clean and jerk. She soon discovered she enjoyed this. The snatch consists of one movement, where you lift the bar overhead. For the clean and jerk, you lift it to your shoulders and then press overhead. You get three attempts in each competition.

Her sister has a background in athletics and recommended Molly follow in her footsteps and join Capital Strength weightlifting club in Dublin, where she is still a member.

She participated in a competition the week after she joined, and after her first national championships, she qualified to compete at the Celtic Nations Championships between Ireland, Scotland and Wales. She quickly realised she had a passion for something she was good at.

Yet, one year into her training and after qualifying for both the World Junior Championships and the European Weightlifting Championships, she suffered a herniated disc while at training camp in Malaysia and China, and was out for a year.

Her injury developed because she wasn’t bracing properly. In weight lifting you breathe into your belly instead of your chest to protect your core. Molly believes the injury happened because she was new to the sport and advanced quickly while still learning the correct techniques.

Stopping was “never” an option for Molly, and this year, she has been on her best run yet: “I don’t know what’s happened,” Molly laughs, “I feel like I’ve gained more confidence after the back injury and I’ve improved quite a bit. You still have that fear in your head that something could go on you but I’ve done the work.

“I just love the sport,” she reasons.

A “growing sport”, the major weightlifting gyms in Ireland are in Belfast, Dublin, Cork and the University of Galway. Molly trains four days per week, travelling up and down to her Dublin gym. She also coaches beginner weightlifting and weightlifting for women, and would like to coach internationally in the future.

While she loves coaching people and seeing them improve, she would ideally train six days per week and would love to do weightlifting full time.

Taking part in weightlifting is costly and participants don’t receive funding so expenses are all paid entirely out of their own pocket. Molly depends on her parents, family and friends along with her part time coaching work to earn a living while trying to develop in the sport.

Weightlifting Ireland would need to earn a number of European medals for funding allocations from Sport Ireland to increase: “I’d like to do it full time but I can’t,” Molly explains.

“I think that’s what most people want, they want to be able to train full time,” she says, adding that weightlifting is “quite time-consuming. I know if I want to progress, I’ll have to give it 100%.”

She would love to medal at U23 at European level but “it will take a lot of work to do that.”

Molly says the Olympics “would be pretty cool” but only the top ten females and males in each weight category get the opportunity. She hopes to qualify for this year’s World Weightlifting Championships as she surpassed the world senior standard at the national championships.

“You need to be training for a good while before you hit your peak,” explains Molly, who has been training for three years excluding the time off recovering from her injury.

“I still have a long way to go until I’m at my peak. I just need to keep going. I’d love to see if we did get funding and we were able to live as full time athletes what the Irish athletes could all do.”

Molly describes weightlifting as 'thrilling': “I think it’s the thrill of putting 80 kilos over your head, it’s kind of mad,” she laughs. As a small growing community, they are a “very tightly knit” bunch where everyone knows everyone and supports each other well. Molly also enjoys the technical aspect of the sport, which she finds “very rewarding.”

“When you get a lift right, it’s amazing,” Molly enthuses.

She is currently in the 63kg category but it will soon be going down to 61kg, which is a “bit of a struggle.”

This will be the third time in the past two years where her weight category has gone down, having started at 64kg. She will need to employ a nutritionist to help her with the cut, at another cost to her: “It’s going to be the lightest I’ve ever been so that can be mentally tough,” Molly says.

Molly had to cut a kilo of weight before her recent competition, so she did a ‘waterload’, drinking seven litres of water on Monday and Tuesday, reducing it to five litres on Wednesday, down to four litres on Thursday, and then on Friday the day before the competition, you drink two litres before 12pm and then stop drinking water, so you end up “very dehydrated.”

On the day of the competition, her weigh in was at 12.30pm and she had a two hour gap to refuel and rehydrate before competing, making sure to cut out salt, fibre and carbs, eating only protein, anything “low residue” that won’t stay in the body or retain water.

“When you’re not with a nutritionist, that can be tricky,” Molly says, adding that the sport is about “more than just lifting weights.”

She wants to remain in the category as they are the most competitive and she has more of a chance of ranking top 10 in U23 in the 61kg category. Breaking the national record was “pretty big" for Molly. On her first attempt, she lifted 93kg, going up to 97kg next and ended with 100kg, which she had never lifted before.

She is usually “very good” at the clean and “terrible” at the jerk. At the nationals, it was the other way around, and she did “the most awful clean” she had ever done. The crowd, she felt, thought she was going to miss it.

“A lot of them know I’m not great at jerks and somehow it was my best jerk I’ve ever done,” Molly says, “It was the first time the crowd went wild, it was amazing.”

Before she goes to lift, she speaks positive affirmations to herself and reminds herself that she has already completed lifts in training. She has also started to lean into her nerves, treating competitions like a performance.

"You've got one more lift left to do and that’s you done,” she recalls telling herself before lifting the final 100kg.

Her coach Faizal is Malaysian. Faizal coached Thammy Nguyen to become the first Irish weightlifter to win a senior medal at the European Weightlifting Championships. She is also coached by Harry and Ayla from Capital Strength, who are her competition coaches. She finds it a “great balance” to have “three really great people” around her.

“I’m a bit obsessed,” Molly says of weightlifting, “You have to be obsessed with it otherwise you don’t see any of the improvements as you go along because training is hard and you have to put a lot of effort into it.

“It’s probably resilience as well that I’ve found because no matter what I’ve gone through, I’m able to push through it.”

There are more women weightlifting than men, and more women qualify for Europeans and Worlds than men. Women are better able to recover through weight training and there are a lot of older women who participate because it's great for bone density.

She encourages young women to try weightlifting: “You see online these days that if you lift weights, you’re going to get bulky," Molly says, "That’s a lie, you’ll actually get more toned.

“With weightlifting, people are very welcoming. They’re one of the nicest groups, especially my club,” she laughs.

The community in Clones has rallied around Molly on numerous occasions, raising money for her to attend training camps abroad. She is very grateful for the support she has received from the Clones community.

“They’ve been great for me. I wouldn’t be where I am now without people from Clones that have come out to support me. I’m grateful for the support I get up here because you wouldn’t get that down in Dublin, they’re very giving,” she concluded.

Molly is looking forward to competing at the next European Weightlifting Junior and U23 Championships in Albania in October.