Yazmin Zammit Stevens improves her Olympic Classification at the 2019 Weightlifting European Championships in Batumi, Georgia. The 25-year-old topped her best total in the 64kg category by a whopping 10kg. In the C group she finished on top in the Clean and jerk with her 103kg attempt and also managed to finish 2nd in the Snatch and total with 86kg and 189kg respectively. All her lifts on the European stage were also National Record attempts confirming Yazmin was in top form and ready to push the limit on the day.
The Weightlifting European Championships were a Gold level qualification event for the 2020 Olympics and therefore saw a record number of participants in top form ready to fight for every kilo to top the Olympic classification. The 64kg group had 24 participants including current World Champion Toma Loredeana as well as multiple other World, European champions and Olympians. Safe to say this particular category was one of the toughest at this meet.
Zammit Stevens, who had been preparing for this meet for several months since the World Championships last November in Ashgabat, showed up ready to fight for every single kilo she could get. She opened her Snatch attempts with a national record 81kg lift, followed by 84kg, and successfully finishing with a huge 86kg lift. This 86kg is an all time personal best for her in any weight class, and a huge 6kg improvement from her snatch attempt at the World Championships 5 months ago. She went on to open her clean and jerks with 100kg, 1kg more than what she finished with in Ashgabat, and went on to successfully lift 103kg on her 2nd attempt. Unfortunately, she missed the jerk on her last attempt at 105kg. Her 189kg total gave her a 10kg improvement in this weight class and a big jump in the Olympic qualification for Tokyo 2020.
Yazmin had been working very hard in preparation for this meet with a training camp in Romania leading up to these championships. Her and her coach Jesmond Caruana were very happy that the long preparation paid off on the day.
This opportunity would have not been possible without the the Malta Weightlifting Association, SportMalta and the Malta Olympic Committee for their ongoing support.