Hanuabada famous for producing weightlifters

HANUABADA village in the heart of Port Moresby is famous for producing weightlifters such as Olympians Dika Toua and Steven Kari.
These weightlifters inspire many other young men and women from Hanuabada to take up the code that contributes a lot of medals for any sporting contingent in events such as the PNG Games.
Team NCD weightlifters for the 7th PNG Games in Kimbe have been preparing and looking forward to the Games for over a year after two deferrals, team manager Ronnie Ebore said.
Ebore confirmed that Team NCD would travel to West New Britain with 13 weightlifters, eight males and five females, plus four officials including him.
“All athletes are from Hanuabada and only one male is from Pari in this NCD weightlifting team.  The youngest is probably 16 or 17 years old,” Ebore said.
“All the weightlifters are new to the PNG Games except for two, Gabriel Lovai and PNG representative Korema Darera.”
All 13 athletes have been training in Dika Toua’s gym with the understanding that the renowned PNG female weightlifter has always supported NCD weightlifting in previous PNG Games.
Ebore said all athletes were aiming for gold in the games after extensive training under coach Gavera Morea, a former PNG representative weightlifter from Hanuabada.
“We are set and planning to bring home about 40 medals to boost Team NCD’s standings in the Games if our individual athletes could win at least three or four medals,” he said.
“We did the calculations, if an individual athlete in our team could win medals in the three divisions of clean and jerk, snatch and total, we would be satisfied with our contribution to Team NCD.”