Our Olympic athlete to watch

Deborah Lovely is making history as the first female weightlifter to represent Australia at two Olympic Games. But the committed Christian is adamant she is not there “to win medals for myself”.

“I do want to win medals, but I want to win them because God gives me the strength and ability to do it,” she said.

A competent athlete in both discus and hammer throw, Lovely took up weightlifting as a 15-year-old to improve her strength. She never imagined the extra training could lead her to twice attend the world’s most prestigious sporting event as a weightlifter.

“I’m just so excited,” she said. “The qualifications were intense. Travelling there, competing and then cheering on the others, it was a really full-on experience. I’m just so happy to have made it through.”

At the Games, Lovely will compete in the +75kg category, making her confident she will avoid some of the problems she experienced going into Athens.

“In the lead- up to Athens I was training so hard, and whilst putting on all that muscle, I was simultaneously trying to lose weight to ensure my weight didn’t breach the 75kg restriction of my category,” she said.

“This year I have moved up a division so I can focus all my effort on being ready for competition and not on losing those last few kilos.”

Throughout her much decorated and multi-faceted career, Deb Lovely has excelled not only in weightlifting and athletics, but in track cycling as well. She also has the option of representing Australia in rugby after the Olympics. She has already competed at two Commonwealth Games (2002 and 2006), winning three silver medals in 2002 and gold in 2006. Deborah is certainly a versatile sportswoman.

Whatever she does, Deb is determined to be the best.  That’s how she was raised.

“There were five of us kids growing up in a Christian home and I was a middle child. We were taught to do our best and give God the glory in whatever we did. We would go to church twice on Sunday. We went to a Christian school. It was basically that Jesus is the main thing in your life and everything else is a bonus.”

That was okay as a kid, says Deborah, but adulthood meant making her own decisions.

“I remember someone once said to me: ‘God doesn’t have grandchildren; he only has children’. You have to make that big decision about God for yourself.”

“I made the decision to be a Christian. I wanted to follow Jesus and wanted him to be more in my life. I’m now only doing the sport because I feel God wants me to do it.”

Her witness often brings interesting responses. “Sometimes I jokingly say that I’m going to bend the rules and people immediately pull me up and say, ‘Oh, Deborah, you’re a Christian’. So, example is important as a Christian.”

She helps out with youth work at her church, speaks about her faith to school groups and provides support at Schoolies Week.

And she reads her Bible every morning. “It really does help put the day in perspective. I enjoy the part that talks about not storing treasures on earth where moths and rust can corrupt. My bar bells are rusty. But that’s OK. The Bible encourages me to think about the treasures I’ll have in heaven.”

Deborah’s testimony has been adapted from The Prize: Sports New Testament published by the Bible Society.

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