The sport of Olympic weightlifting has always produced some of the most interesting and wide-ranging scope of athletes, each and every one of them unique in their own way.

Catching up with some of the most recent participants at the Ontario Scholastic Championships in North Bay, folks training with coach Alex Fera and the Sudbury Weightlifting Club, nothing contradicted that perception.

Just last week, 10 year old grade 5 student Jayce Munro was sharing his training platform with Cambrian College intern and Kirkland Lake native Pierce Belanger, a young man who spent the days leading up to the competition working a series of night shifts with one of the local mining outfits.

There is absolutely nothing standard about the cross-section of athletic talent that we will find in these parts.

First introduced to the world of Cross Fit training at the tender age of four, Munro began to tackle the lifting more earnestly back in the fall. "I just tried it and liked it, did it a few times and started going all of the time," said the youngster who attends R.L. Beattie Elementary School.

Establishing a new personal best lift in the clean and jerk of 35kg, the eldest of two kids in the family has taken quickly to some of the finer details of the sport as he begins to build a base from which he can then continue to progress.

"I used just a PVC pipe for my first couple of sessions," Munro explained. "You need to get used to the technique before you start putting the weights on. At first, I liked the snatch more and then I started to like the clean and jerk."

"It's just a movement that I like to do."

Come time for the competition, there is a certain focus that is required, even for the youngest of those who take to the stage. "We always look at a certain spot when we lift," noted Munro. "Here, it's the smiley faces over there."

"At the competition, there was a pillar and a crack in the pillar. Alex told me to look two inches below that."

Pierce Belanger, by contrast, was well used to the world of weights - just not Olympic lifting, when he started training roughly the same time as his young counterpart. As a youth, the now 25 year old had often worked out alongside his father, the latter a big fan of body building.

"He was lifting weights more with an eye on just getting stronger, looking good," said Belanger, who was named best male lifter at the Scholastic Meet last month. His background offered a set on challenges that differed notably from any of his SWC teammates.

"With all of the body building I was doing, I wasn't very flexible any more," said Belanger. "The thing that was appealing about Olympic lifting was that I was already strong, but I wasn't technical or fast or flexible."

Sure, the joy of competition was part of the attraction - but so too was the idea of incorporating his training in ways that could also avail him at work and at play.

"It was a little about just being able to use the muscles I had built," said Belanger. "Even though the lifts are not very applicable to the real world, the benefits they provide through a greater range of motion, the flexibility, the explosiveness - it all translated into my day to day life."

While he did not necessarily reach the event goals he had set for himself, Belanger was pleased with new PB's across the board, bumping his highwater marks up to 131kg (clean & jerk) and 112kg (snatch) respectively.

"With all of the circumstances, I was surprised," he said. "The night shift conversion was really hard on me. I was at work and the next thing I knew, I was competing."

It was the latest step that Belanger has taken, travelling a slightly different path of weightlifting from the world to which he had grown accustomed.

"I had been dead-lifting like a donkey my whole life - straight-legged and everything," he said. "The muscles I had developed from curls had eliminated all wrist flexibility, even arm flexibility."

"My first three months here, I couldn't even get the bar to rest on my shoulders. I wasn't good enough to get better, but I was too strong for my own good. That took hours and hours of stretching and stretching."

Now, he sets his sights ahead, though not in a big rush to step back into the spotlight. "I would like to take eight to twelve weeks to just really train, to come in and do something good again."

Joining Munro and Belanger in representing Sudbury in North Bay were 14 year old Elita Lajoie from Collège Notre-Dame, capturing the 87kg class with lifts of 58kg (snatch) and 76kg (clean and jerk), as well guest lifter Bronwynn Kalinda (50kg - snatch; 63 kg - C & J).