Colombia win first ever Olympic gold in lifting

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Sydney: Colombia won its first ever Olympic gold medal on Wednesday when weightlifter Maria Isabel Urrutia took the women's 75 kg contest.

Urrutia, a 35-year-old appearing in her first and probably last Olympic Games, lifted 110 kg in the snatch and 135 kg in the clean-and-jerk.

The top three lifters tied for first place and Urrutia took the gold judged on body weight.

Kuo Yi-Hang of Taiwan and Nigeria's Ruth Ogbeifo tried to better her total with their final lifts. But they failed, leaving all three women tied on a total of 245 kg. In such cases the competitor with the lowest body weight from the weigh-in takes gold.

Urrutia had tipped the scales at 73.26 kg to Ogbeifo's 74.20 and Kuo's 74.52. That meant the Nigerian took silver and the Taiwanese had to settle for bronze.

Urrutia's win capped a fine career in which she has set the standard for South American women's lifting, taking 24 world championship medals.

This was her first appearance at the Olympics where women's lifting is making its debut.

The Colombians have sent 21 male lifters to previous Games but all left empty-handed.

Ogbeifo's silver was her country's first Olympic weightlifting medal and she was ecstatic, toppling backwards off the platform in disbelief after her final lift before running to hug her coach.

Even after she failed in her bid to win gold she left the platform with a grin from ear to ear.

"We are extremely happy. It's a personal best. Glory to God!," her coach Cosmos Sampson said.

Kazakhstan's Tatyana Khromova lay in the silver medal position after the snatch section but misjudged her entry weight in the clean-and-jerk and failed all three attempts at 132.5 kg to crash out of the competition.



(c) Reuters Limited.