Thailand’s Sukanya Srisurat poses with silver medallist Pimsiri Sirikaew (left) and bronze medallist Hsing-Chun Kuo of Taiwan on the podium of the women’s 58kg weightlifting competition at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
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Thailand’s first gold at the Rio Olympics also came from weightlifting, as Sopita Tanasan won the women’s 48kg category.
The Thai pair always looked likely to dominate proceedings in the women’s final – Sirikaew, the London 2012 silver medallist was back in this category having switched down from 63kg, and her rising star of a compatriot had established her huge potential by winning world junior titles in 2014 and 2015.
“I felt so sad when I was banned but I never gave up to get back and now everything has been repaid”, she said following her victory on Monday night.
On the subject of Thailand’s weightlifting success here – they already have four medals – Sirikaew – who is only the third lifter to take two Olympic medals in this event – said: “I am so happy to be one of them, because we are representing the Thai people and Thailand”.
“We have been wanting this gold medal for some time and it is especially pleasing because she has had an injury that she has been carrying”, Lin said.
“There are 60 million people [in Thailand]”.
“Congratulations to her. We work as a team to make Thailand happy”.
So far, Thailand leads the medal count in weightlifting with 4 total, but there’s plenty more action to go, and only 4 of 15 total weight classes have finished competition in Rio. She wasn’t pleased with her performance, though.
Pimsiri said Sukanya had paid her dues for the doping offence and insisted she was happy to finish second to the gold medallist, despite her competitor’s previous drug use. “I am very disappointed. This medal does not meet my expectation, but I will keep doing my best and keep trying going into future competitions”. She hauled 102 in the snatch and 129 in the clean and jerk to comfortably make the podium, 8kg ahead of fourth placed Alexandra Escobar of Ecuador.
Kuo Hsing-Chun attempted an Olympic record 139kg clean & jerk to take the gold but failed the lift.
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This story has been corrected to reflect on second reference that Mosquera won gold.
