Senior National Championships

By Stabroek News On In Sports |
In this Clairmonte Marcus photo, John ‘Big John’ Edwards has almost completed his record breaking squat of 749¼lbs in the GAPLF’s Senior National Championships at the Banks DIH Thirst Park Sports Club.
In this Clairmonte Marcus photo, John ‘Big John’ Edwards has almost completed his record breaking squat of 749¼lbs in the GAPLF’s Senior National Championships at the Banks DIH Thirst Park Sports Club.

‘Big John’ darkens  old records

John ‘Big John’ Edwards smashed three of the four records in the 2008 Guyana Amateur Power Lifting Federation’s (GAPLF) Senior National Champion-ships which was sponsored by Guinness – ‘Reach for Greatness’ on Sunday at the Banks DIH Thirst Park Sports Club.

In this Clairmonte Marcus photo, John ‘Big John’ Edwards has almost completed his record breaking squat of 749¼lbs in the GAPLF’s Senior National Championships at the Banks DIH Thirst Park Sports Club.
In this Clairmonte Marcus photo, John ‘Big John’ Edwards has almost completed his record breaking squat of 749¼lbs in the GAPLF’s Senior National Championships at the Banks DIH Thirst Park Sports Club.

Edwards broke his old squat and dead lift records of 743¾lbs and 655¾lbs but was shy of the bench press record (507lbs) by 5.5lbs, he also cleared the old overall total weight mark of 1,890lbs to get to 1,917lbs.

Marks of 749¼lbs(S), 501½lbs (BP) and 666¾lbs (DL) were reached by Guyana’s First Regional Heavyweight Champion (Big John) in the 275lbs category. And from Berbice  Vijay Rahim and Bhojkumar Jagnarine were also in record breaking mode.  Rahim who competed in the 114lbs category set a new dead lift record of 413¾lbs and  he also squatted 330½lbs and bench pressed 148¾lbs for a total of 892½lbs.

Jagnarine who accumulated the top total of 1,394lbs in the 165lbs category erased the old dead lift record of 606lbs to set 611¾lbs as the new mark and  he also reached 270 and 512½lbs in bench press and squat events.

Randolph Morgan who competed in the 181lbs category copped the Best Lifter title of the tournament ahead of veteran Winston Stoby and ‘Big John’.

He piled up a total of 1,647lbs after squatting 622¾lbs, bench pressing 402½lbs and dead lifting 622¾lbs.

Other category victors were 132lbs candidate Wazem Immamdeen who had a total of 1,057 (B-209¼lbs, S-380¼lbs, DL-468¼lbs) and Paul Adams (148lbs) who accumulated a total of 1,157lbs (B-259, S-440¾, DL-578½.

Andrew Adams won the 220lbs category with weights of 496, 209¼ and 429¾ in the squat, bench press and dead lift division while Berbician Farouk Abdul swept the 242lbs category with weights of 639¼(S), 363¼(BP)and 562(DL) for a grand total of 1,565lbs.