Britain's strongest gran bidding for gold months after taking up powerlifting

Real Fix

Credit: SWNS  Britain's strongest gran is bidding for gold just months after taking up powerlifting “by accident”.  Dr Martine Barons, 63, will lift for Great Britain at the European Championships in Finland this summer.  The 5ft 6ins mum-of-two, who has four grandchildren, started lifting weights for fun but soon realised she was naturally talented.  Martine now trains three times a week while working full-time as an academic researcher at Warwick University.  Her hard work is paying off and she can now deadlift a colossal 125kg (19.7st) and squat 80kg (12.6st).

Transcript

00:00I'm Dr Martine Merriman's line worker at the University of Warwick and I'm a statistician.

00:09I recently took a powerlifting and I'm surprised as anyone to be standing here with this medal

00:14on. What happened was I have a good friend at work who is a PT and we went to the gym

00:21for the first time together just before Christmas and she taught me how to deadlift. She told

00:26me that actually picking up 60kg on your first attempt is really quite good. A few weeks

00:31later we were in the gym together and managed 100kg on the deadlift and she said really

00:36you are particularly strong and you should compete. And so I did. Long story short we

00:40both competed in a real qualifiers for the ABPU. We both came away with medals for our

00:46division and now I have been invited to the single lift championships, to represent Great

00:52Britain at the European Championships in Finland and also to the British Championships

00:56for where athletes are picked to go to the world. So I'm very surprised but it's great.

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