Fifteen lifters, 14 Personal Best totals and one Disaster. That was the score for Melbourne University at the Australian Junior Championships and Intervarsity on April 4th.
Best lifters for us were, firstly, Con Barbakos, who improved an overdue 40kg with 790kg at 125 and set three club records (Squat 290kg, Bench 220kg and Total). Just behind him in that class was Luke Bainbridge, who broke the one record Con missed with Deadlift 293.5kg. To confuse things even more Luke broke Con’s old Australian Junior Records for Total and Deadlift! The other worldly Chung Wai mystified again, breaking the Australian Junior Total record with 553.5kg, not that Chung would know, and setting a 137.5kg Bench Press club record.
Chung Wai on the bench
Next top performances came from Chris Seville, 9 out of 9 attempts for another 40kg jump, with more to come at the Australian Championships. Also with a top performance former Club Bad Boy Neville Harris celebrated his return to the fold with a best of 670kg at 75kg, many years after he first breached those dizzy heights.
David Jame demonstrated that 107kg into 90kg won’t go and bombed miserably on 302.5kg Squat after a monumental loss. Club proto-member 75 year old Wim Van Weenen set two World over 70 Records, with 222kg Squat and 236kg Deadlift. Also in the 100kg class Chris Schaerf loomed large with a 737.5kg total.
Further down the lists, Minh the Merciless was surprisingly sane through his squats, but began to spasm once more on the Bench and was in full flight on the Deadlift, missing hopelessly twice, being warned twice for disreputable conduct and then coming through on the last Deadlift, just to show that the rules of logic do not apply to him.
Amongst the newcomers, Russian refugee Vladimir Roudavski was unsettled by the mysterious guy in the front row reading “Pravda” upside down but held together for an improvement in his second contest; unfortunately no-one has seen Vladimir since his last Deadlift though. Garish “Damien” Shankir Squatted an enormous (for him anyway) 200kg but twice missed 240kg Deadlift, blowing his hoped for chance of recruitment into the Indian Premier League.
And on it went. Bests also came from Adam Truger and Michael Censori. Mark Woodruff coasted through 560kg at 90kg and is a secret weapon for the future. Laird Ross was tuning up for the World Sub Junior Championships, but unfortunately was tuned out too, on a shock miss on 158.5kg Australian Record BP.
All this put Melbourne Uni well ahead in the Intervarsity team score, for two wins in the two years of the revived IV.
– Robert Wilks
