Weight-lifter Nastassya Novikava: judges took Olympic medal away from me

The medals in weight-lifting in the category of 58 kilos among women were played at the Olympic Games in London on Monday.

Belarusian Nastassya Novikava (Beijing bronze winner) made a not very confident performance - several her attempts ended in a failure. Moreover, two attempts were not counted by the judges due to some reason.

As a result, she got the 7th place with the total of 230 kilos (103+127). China's Li Xueying won the golden medal with 246 kilos (108+138), Thailand's Pimsiri Sirikaew got the silver with 236 (100+136), and Ukraine's Julia Kalina got the bronze with the result of 235 kilos (106+129).

According to the information provided by BELTA, Novikava's coaches are going to file an appeal against the judges' decision. "We will file the note of protest, but, according to the competition's rules, it will not affect the result", - says Chief Coach of the Belarusian national weightlifting team Alyaksandr Hancharou. - Unfortunately the judges saw a mistake here and took the Olympic medal away from a person who deserved it". 

"I rarely get good results in a jerk, — Nastassya Novikava has told in an interview to "Pressball". — Although everything is okay at trainings... As for the push-off... I am slowly coming round after what happened yesterday. You saw everything. The last attempt was the best one. I don't know what they disliked about it. We will appeal against this. What can I say? They took a medal away from me...".

The judges allegedly explained their decision not to count the attempt by the fact that Novikava "put the weight on her chest and started rolling it". The weight-lifter says that "the disks balanced by themselves". "Are you saying that I should have stood there and wait until they stop balancing? I think that the move was performed in pace: the weight was taken on the chest, then a correction happened and there was a push-off", - she says. 

Photo — daylife.com