Frank Mantek on the European Weightlifting Championships: “Yes We Can!”
by Randall J. Strossen, IronMind Enterprises, Inc. © 2010
With three weeks before the European Weightlifting Championships, Sports Director of the German Weightlifting Federation and the German National Men’s Weightlifting Coach Frank Mantek told IronMind® today, “I have trained both super heavyweights of my training group during the past months very intensely,” referring to Matthias Steiner and Almir Velagic.
Almir Velagic sank the putt on the 190-kg snatch at the 2009 European Weightlifting Championships. Velagic made the German team for the Europeans after his big performance at the 2009 Arnold, where Frank Mantek and his lifters would like to return in 2011. IronMind® | Randall J. Strossen photo.
“We have renounced the otherwise usual training camps for this preparation almost completely, because immediately after this event we will begin with the World Weightlifting Championships preparation in 2010, which will take place at the end of September in Turkey. This competition is the of two Olympic qualification competitions for London 2012 [Olympics] and that is why it is very important for us.”
Mantek also mentioned the recent birth (March 17, 2010) of Matthias Steiner’s son, Felix, as a watershed point in the life of the Olympic weightlifting champion.
“With me personally, [things did] not run completely as well as I would have fancied: I had to be operated on four weeks ago all of a sudden on the intervertebral disc. I could feel in own body how far today the medicine has progressed. Already three days after my operation I was again in the training and have missed thus from the preparation of my boys for the European Championships virtually nothing at all.
“Now keep for us your fingers crossed that the last 20 days of our competition preparation run [smoothly] and we have something to celebrate after the fight of the superheavyweights in the in Minsk."
Echoing the catchphrase that guided the Hollywood story of Matthias Steiner’s rise to an Olympic gold medal, Mantek closed with, “Yes we can!”
Almir Velagic sank the putt on the 190-kg snatch at the 2009 European Weightlifting Championships. Velagic made the German team for the Europeans after his big performance at the 2009 Arnold, where Frank Mantek and his lifters would like to return in 2011. IronMind® | Randall J. Strossen photo.
