Weightlifting: Four-year development plan on course – GWF President

President of the Ghana Weightlifting Federation (GWF), Mr Ben Nunoo-Mensah has stated that the federation's adopted four-year development plan is on course.

He said the measures put in place by the federation were steadily yielding results, and could say they exceeded their target for the 2015 weightlifting season.

The GWF boss noted that when he took over office in 2013, he, together with the executive board of GWF, observed that the weightlifting brand was not attractive so they decided to take a short-term approach to make the brand get the needed media attention.

He explained they decided to participate in as many international competitions as possible to push their athletes to the level they deserved, which subsequently boosted the image of the brand due to the performance of the athletes.

He added that in their second year, 2014, they decided to put structures in place, including administrative and technical structures.

'We realised that the weightlifters used to train in a small garage so we managed to put some resources together and put up a training hall and a gym at the Accra Sports Stadium, which gave us a physical structure and also acquired an administrative office at the stadium,' he said.

Mr. Nunoo-Mensah added that the technical knowhow of the federation was also improved with the training of about 27 coaches with support from the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) through Prof Kyle Pierce and funding from the Olympic Solidarity.

He added that to improve the brand equity of the federation, they pushed for some athletes to be recruited into the security service, which, according to the president, has been a good collaboration.

'Now we can boast of weightlifters in the Ghana Police Service and Ghana Immigration Service, and we are still in discussion with the Security Services Sports Association (SESSA) to include it in their SESSA Games,' he noted.

The Ghana Weightlifting Federation capo said in 2015 their target was to develop young athletes and put up weightlifting clubs across the country, which will be the bedrock of the federation.

'If the game has to grow then it has to be more community-based rather than putting a few individuals as weightlifters in the name of being national weightlifters,' he explained.

He added that the clubs' formation was a success and they will be approved at the annual congress later this month.

'We are hoping that every weightlifter in Ghana will belong to a club since they will now own the sport,' he noted.

He again mentioned that their target for 2015 was exceeded because the federation did not plan to participate in the IWF World championship in Houston, but they competed and got good results.

'We had one of our junior weightlifters, Christian Amoah, moving from a ranking of 87 in the world to 29 in his weight category of 85kg while Forrester Osei also set a new national record in the 94kg,' he said.