Lorraine Pelletier did not begin weight training with an eye on Olympic weighlifting. That would have been pure folly, picking up her new athletic pastime well into her sixties.
Yet, there she was, just a few months shy of her seventieth birthday this past April in Scarborough, establishing no less than eight new national records in the Masters classification of the Canadian Weighlifting Federation.
All of this on the back of a television program - and a very good training partner and coach.
Pelletier was certainly not an obvious choice for this type of rapid ascension to sporting excellence. "I played some badminton and I always enjoyed swimming and that kind of thing, but I never competed," she said recently during one of her twice a week workouts.
"I was never one for any type of physical exercises." Catching some afternoon programming some three years back, Pelletier recalled the words of advice of a TV physician, promoting the general benefits of weight training for older women.
As good fortune would have it, Pelletier had recently united with long-time childhood friend Bob Leclair, a member of the Sudbury Weightlifting Club dating back to the 1970's or so.
"All I was thinking at the time was just doing some weight training," Pelletier said. Very gradually, the challenges increased. With his thorough knowledge of the specifics of Olympic-style weightlifting, Leclair began raising the bar for his new protegee.
"You're developing strength, speed, co-ordination and timing," Leclair explained. "They're all speed movements, the lifts. If you're not quick enough, you could easily miss the lift. You're just not going to get underneath and in position quick enough."
Truth be told, it was Pelletier that doing much of the raising of the bar, over and over, in practice sessions each and every week. "I was never motivated by being a competitor, that was never in my mind," she said. "That happened very haphazardly."
Leclair, however, could see the potential. "This past Christmas, he told me I was ready for the Canadian championship," said Pelletier. "If it hadn't been for Bob, giving me the motivation, the reassurance to get rid of the apprenhension. I learned a lot just with that."
By this time, she had the look of a weighlifter, with all facets of her training coming together nicely. "The biggest challenge is just getting those weights over your head," noted Pelletier with a laugh.
"Just making sure that you realize what you're doing. It's a combination of the mind and proper technique," she added. Yet without any background with competitive sports of any kind over the course of some six decades spent in Sudbury, Pelletier was no different than a pre-teen athlete entering their first event.
"I did have a lot of fear going in," she said. "But Bob helped me to realize that he wasn't going to ask me to do anything that I had not already done." Interestingly enough, as Pelletier explained, the adrenaline rush of competition isn't a whole lot different for her than it would be for her grand-daughters enjoying their first taste of that particular environment.
"Once I got there, I realized what a sport is," she confessed. "It's not just coming here and doing fitness." Side by side with competitors of all ages, shapes and sizes, Pelletier excelled.
The end result is a placque that sits proudly on the training room wall, presented by the Canadian Weighlifting Federation, that confirms the new records in the Masters (W-70) 69 kg division. A pair of marks in the "snatch" and no less than three each in both the "clean & jerk" and the "total" classifications.
But just as it was three years ago, Pelletier trains today with no clear-cut goal in mind, other than general fitness. "The good thing about this is that I'm still training and continuing," she said.
"And I will continue to just do it, day by day, because one never knows. If it leads me again to a surprise, so be it."
