Toua continuing to work hard

Sports

PACIFIC and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Dika Toua is continuing to work hard for a place in the record books despite surviving a life-threatening illness and juggling weightlifting with motherhood.
She was the first woman to make a lift at the Olympic Games, as a 16-year-old at Sydney 2000, where women first competed.
Toua heard about her selection for those Games during a public announcement while she was collecting rubbish.
Since then, she has twice become a mother of two, survived a life-threatening bout of tuberculosis that led to her being kept in isolation in hospital, gone back on a decision to retire from the sport, and won an unsurpassable 12 continental titles.
She trains at the Oceania Weightlifting Institute in New Caledonia, 2,500km away from her children back home in Papua New Guinea.
Toua could have dominated the Oceania Championships in Nauru this month, had they not been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Regardless of the new date or new qualifying requirements, she is well placed to qualify for Tokyo next year, where she will become the first woman in weightlifting history to compete at five Olympic Games.
Toua would be the first five-timer to do it, having competed at four straight Games before missing Rio 2016 to spent time with her children.
So she is set to go down in Olympic history as the first woman to make a lift, the first woman to compete five times, and the first woman to take part in the Olympic Games 20 years apart.
Hopefully, in Tokyo, Toua will gain the recognition she deserves.
Oceania Weightlifting Federation president Marcus Stephen said she was “a role model for all female athletes”.
“Toua’s longevity, given the challenges that she has faced, is unprecedented and astounding,” Stephen said. “Her dedication, loyalty and sacrifices are unmatched. I am proud of her achievements. Toua is a legend in our region.”
PNG Weightlifting Federation president Sir John Dawanicura said Toua was a role model in the country.
“There have been times because of all the challenges she has faced, when my heart has gone out to her,” said Sir John, who is also the president of the PNG Olympic Committee. “She has made so many sacrifices.”
Toua’s local fame means she spends a lot of time in the house when she is back in Hanuabada.
“I hardly go anywhere because everywhere I go, I get mobbed by kids and adults,” she said.
“In a good way, of course, I think everybody loves me.”
PNG has never won an Olympic medal in any sport, and Toua competes mostly in Oceania and Commonwealth competitions that attract little attention in major weightlifting nations such as China, Russia, Iran and the United States.
Nor, until her aunty took up the sport, had it had a female weightlifter. That prompted Toua to go and watch weightlifters at a backyard gym near her home.
“I started weightlifting at the age of 10,” said Toua, whose younger sisters Thelma, 28, and Konio, 21, are also international weightlifters.
“When I took it up, I just did it for fun, playing around with the weights. But I loved it, I seemed to have a special talent and when I was 13, I was allowed to compete internationally.”
Toua had been a keen runner and netball player as a young girl, and was inspired by former Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman but never thought she’d become an Olympian.
It happened only six years after she first lifted weights and she learned she was going to Sydney in unusual circumstances.
“It was a Sunday morning and we were working as volunteers at a fun run to raise money for PNG’s Olympic team,” Toua said.
Two runners and two swimmers had been selected and little did she know that there was a fifth member of the team.
The International Olympic Committee had sent a tripartite invitation offered to nations who are not well represented at the Olympic Games to PNG.
“I was actually collecting rubbish at the time, empty water bottles and a lot of bits of paper lying around at the stadium at the end of the fun run,” she said.
“There were thousands of people there and they made a public announcement that I had been selected to represent PNG at Sydney. It was a big shock to me, I knew nothing about it.”
When it came to the big day in Sydney, the then 16-year-old Toua was first up in the old 48kg class.
“I remember clearly that I was really nervous because I was the first one up on stage,” she said. “I went up and missed my first lift but then I went back and made the second.”
She finished 10th that time and four years later in Athens, she had a career-high finish of sixth and another case of nerves, this time at the opening ceremony.
“I was our flag-bearer in Athens and I was so excited with all those people watching but also very nervous,” Toua said.
“And I never imagined how heavy the flag was. But I swung it around and enjoyed myself. Athens was probably my favourite event looking back over my career.”
Toua was seventh at Beijing 2008 and 12th at London 2012.
She won Commonwealth Games silver in 2006 in Melbourne and two years ago on the Gold Coast, and gold at Glasgow 2014 after the disqualification of Nigeria’s Chika Amalaha for doping.
The Indian who finished ahead of her on the Gold Coast, Sanjita Chanu, was also involved in a doping controversy, having tested positive in both her A and B samples at the 2017 International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships, only to be cleared about a year later because of an “administrative error”.
The controversial presence of Chanu in 2018 also cost Toua money, as she was awarded K200,000 by the Government for her 2014 gold and K100,000 for second place on the Gold Coast.
Toua teamed up with Paul Coffa who has been her coach since 2002 after impressing him at the Oceania Championships in Fiji.
Coffa and his wife Lily run the Oceania Institute, which is home to a multi-national group of athletes from the Pacific.
“We live, train, dine and do everything together like a family,” Toua said.
There was a gap in her run of Commonwealth Games appearances in 2010 when she became a mother for the second time.
Her 13-year-old son Paul was named after her coach and her daughter Geua is nine.
Her husband Willie Mavara Tamasi, the national coach and manager, also spends a lot of time at the institute.
“It’s hard being a mum and a weightlifter at the same time, and I have to leave my children at home while I’m training,” Toua said.
“But I have a goal and I’m working towards it for the future of my children. I’m so grateful to my parents, who have done so much to help raise my children.
“I named Paul after Paul Coffa as he has played such a big part in my career. I wouldn’t have come this far if it wasn’t for him.
“Every time I am back home, I don’t perform the same as I do when I’m with him. It seems like I’ve been with him almost my whole life.”
Never was the support of the Coffas and her fellow athletes at the institute more needed than in 2013 when Toua fell ill.
She had made a total of 191kg, then a career best, in winning the Oceania Championships in Brisbane.
“As soon as I got back to Noumea, I wasn’t feeling well — I thought it was a common cold,” she said.
“Then one night, it was really bad. I was admitted to hospital and I found out that I had tuberculosis.”
Toua was kept in isolation and said she was lucky to be in Noumea.
“They were able to diagnose the disease and they happened to have the right medicine,” she said.
Toua reached a low point during those two weeks in isolation.
“I never told anyone this but when I was in hospital, I sort of gave up on weightlifting,” she said. “I guess that was the worst time for me.
“I said to myself that when I get back to the institute, I might as well pack up and go back home.
“But when I walked in and Paul hugged me and told me that everything was going be okay, that I needed to train the next day, it changed my mind.”
Toua was back in the gym the next morning but it was hard work.
“I couldn’t bend my knees, I couldn’t even squat 50kg, that’s how hard it was during that period,” she said. “But I fought my way back and I went to the Commonwealth Championships in Malaysia.”
That was five months later, during which time Toua had lost a lot of strength.
Her total in Malaysia was down by 28kg on her Brisbane performance but within a year, she had recovered well enough to win Commonwealth Games gold.
PNG did not qualify any women for Rio 2016, where Toua’s Oceania Institute colleague Morea Baru was the country’s only weightlifter.
Toua dropped down from 53kg to 49kg when the bodyweight classes changed in 2018, and won the Pacific Games and Oceania titles last year.
IWF president Papandrea said: “The determination, fortitude and resilience demonstrated by Toua, in a sport that is incredibly arduous on the body and mind truly places her among the heroes and heroines of international sport.
“It is not just the success and longevity in weightlifting, but the sincere humility that makes her such an icon for others to emulate.”
Tokyo may not be the end of her competitive career, even though she will be 36 in June.
Toua gained a coaching diploma in 2014 and is keen to “give something back to the sport” when she retires.
The Hanuabada villager believes she has some more years left and that her next big target would be to compete at 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
“I don’t know when I will stop,” she said.
“Weightlifting is in my blood. I don’t know if they can get rid of me.” – insidethegames

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