June 26, 2014
Schoolboy stars in weight contest
Whangarei Boys High School student Taiao Corditz-Kawiti of Ngati Wai has a weight on his shoulders . . . but he can lift it.
The 17-year-old came back from last month’s Oceania Weightlifting Championships in New Caledonia with a gold medal in the youth 94kg-and-under division, lifting 90 kilograms in the snatch and personal best 120kgs in the clean and jerk.
He followed that up with a personal best of 97 kilograms in the snatch at last week’s nationals.
Corditz-Kawiti got hooked on weighlifting when a fellow rugby player at Auckland Grammar took him along to a crossfit gym, and he now trains six days a week.
"A lot of it’s technique and you train for the technique. You do the same two lifts over and over again. But we do a lot of strength as well, so it's about 80 percent technique, maybe 20 strength," he says.
His aim is to make the Commonwealth Games and Olympic teams, and he’s keen to study journalism or psychology at Massey University’s Albany campus so he can train under New Zealand’s top lifter and coach Richie Patterson.
Massey University recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding Ngatiwai to provide educational opportunities for Iwi rangatahi.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH TAIAO CORDITZ-KAWITI CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MTk1MzQ=
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