Girevoy Sport is still very new in Australia, so new that only two Australians have competed at international competitions (Paul Tucker and Emily Friedel).
Paul Tucker has been training with kettlebells for around 8 years and attended his first international competition in Hamburg in 2006. He also competed in Ventspils Atlans in 2008 with the 32kg bells getting 29 jerks and 76 snatches (Paul is in his 40s so this is a great achievement).
Paul Tucker started the Girevoy Sport Australia Association (GSAA), which officially started accepting members early in 2009. The GSAA now has around 40 members.
Relatively informal cross country GSAA competitions are held every few months, with both traditional GS events (biathlon and long cycle) and non-traditional events for those new to the sport (10 min sets of jerks, snatches or cleans with as many hand changes as needed and the bell can be put down). People can complete a competition set on their own or get a small group together. They doesn't have official judging yet because they doesn't have official judges! When they have enough people interested they will work towards more formal competitions.
Emily has been training for GS for 2 years. She competed for the first time in an international competition in November 2009 at the AKC classic in Las Vegas. She started getting online coaching from Cate Imes about six months before the competition and she helped Emily a lot. Most people who do GS have heard of Cate because she was the USA's first MS. Cate's a strong woman, she's done 38 jerks with the 32kg with one hand change! Emily has always admired Cate and really like her snatch technique.
While in the US Emily got MS in long cycle (114 reps with 20kg) and CMS in biathlon (110 one arm jerks and 110 snatches with the 16kg) under the WKC ranking system. So far Emily's best results are (all done with one hand change): 80 one arm jerks with 24kg, 121 one arm long cycle with 20kg, 140 one arm jerks with 20kg and 102 snatches with 20kg. Snatches are my worst lift!
For the future Emily would like to work up doing snatches with 24kg like the professional Russian and Latvian women. This is a few years away though! Emily would also like to get more people involved in Girevoy Sport in Australia.
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