The IWF Junior World Championships saw Malta’s leading youngster Tenishia Thornton win the 55kg B group and finish in 6th place overall in the snatch, 9th place overall in the clean and jerk and 8th place overall in the total. Her 5 successful attempts were all good enough to break her current 55kg senior national record by a whopping 18kg. But in case this isn’t impressive enough, the 16 year old also broke the snatch youth commonwealth record by 6kg, clean and jerk youth commonwealth record by 5kg and the total by 10kg.
The 16 year old is technically still a youth athlete, and therefore was one of the youngest competitors in the field. She managed all her snatch attempts at 77kg, 79kg and 81kg. She went on to open her clean and jerks with 97kg, followed by a near miss at 99kg which she then managed on her third attempt.
After topping the B group and surpassing athletes from Venezuela, Croatia, Egypt, Poland, Israel and Turkmenistan; she went on to also surpass athletes that competed in the A group. These athletes included lifters from Kazakhstan, Greece, Germany and Italy
The group was won by Belgian lifter Nina Sterckx, followed by and Ukraine then Uzbekistan. This competition comes only a few weeks before the Youth World Championships which will be held in Mexico in June. There Tenishia will be competing against athletes her age, and therefore be even more competitive in that field. Tenishia was accompanied by her coach and MWA President Jesmond Caruana.
This competition could not be possible without the help of SportMalta and the Malta Olympic committee.