Sammy Aboagye-Kodjoe and Benedict Grant had a great scrap in the junior 66s. Benedict squatted a new junior British record of 220.5kg and pushed Sammy to pull 255kg to win by only 2 kilos.
The junior 83s were even closer! Matthew Pond broke the junior British record with an efficient 291kg and gave himself a huge head start that he maintained all the way to sub-total. However, the landscape changed with the opening deadlifts. Joey Awala opened with a massive 295kg and Max Mansell-Rowe responded with 300kg, giving them both a 710kg total with Pond on 731kg. Both the deadlifters took 315kg to Pond's 262.5kg which put Awala into second with nearly 15kg still to make up for first place.
Pond attempted 270kg for his third but he lost it at lock out and had to wait to see if anyone could come past. There was some gameplay with the coaches changing third attempts but in the end, Awala had the advantage, being 7.5kg ahead. In the end, Awala took 328.5kg for a junior British deadlift record and the lead in the competition. Mansell-Rowe and his coach took the decision that moving up a place was out of reached and settled on snatching Awala's brand new record with a tough-looking 329kg. Pond keeps the silver and Awala takes his first junior British title.
Nathan Gevao showed improvements across the board and laid down a solid 815kg total that took the junior British total record and puts him second only to Christian Ayandokun in the BP 93kg open rankings. This total would have won at junior worlds last year but the standard rises so fast, it's hard to say what target he will need to hit this year in Romania.
The 84kg juniors class in particular was phenomenal. Erholove Izobodo-John looked as casual as ever as she sauntered out to the platform to absolutely devastate the open British records as a junior lifter. At 21 years old, she shows enviable grace under pressure and her confidence is well-placed. 215kg squat was smooth, well within her capabilities and comfortably more than any other 84kg lifter in BP has ever done.
As impressive as that is, squat isn't even her best lift. She's been trading the mantle of biggest deadlift in BP with Ziana Azariah recently and we anticipated a big pull. The crowd were more hyped than she was as she was called to the bar. She took a moment at the back of the platform and, eyes closed, composed herself. The bar left the floor at speed and she just needed a bit of extra effort to pull it back into place. Emotions finally spilled over as she got her three white lights and took back her deadlift crown.
Erholove seems absolutely limitless right now and we can only speculate about what she will be capable of at Junior Worlds with another 12 weeks of training under her belt. She's only 2.5kg off Amanda Lawrence's junior deadlift world record now so that's surely within her grasp.
With such an incredible performance in this class, it would be easy to lose sight of the absolute belter of a day Melina Irawo had. She went nine for nine and broke the open British bench record with 123kg on her way to an impressive 538kg total - 7th biggest in the entire IPF in the junior 84kg class.
Mention must also go to Nonso Chinye in the sub-junior 105kg class, squatting 275.5kg for a sub-junior British record and deadlifting 343kg for the JUNIOR record, considerably in excess of his own sub-junior world record at 330kg. This was the biggest deadlift of the competition and the biggest deadlift in the sub-juniors in any weight class in all of the IPF. Can't wait to see what he pulls at Junior worlds!
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