Inner strength pushing weightlifter onto global stage
It’s a Monday evening and 16-yearold weightlifter Litia Nacagilevu is practicing a move she’s done thousands of times: the clean and jerk, lifting the barbell to her chest, and then over her head.
Nacagilevu trains at The Hub, a tucked-away gym on Vanguard St and home to Nelson Weightlifting Club. Sitting nearby, Tia’s father Joni gestures at his daughter.
“This move Tia’s doing right now, when she was six or seven, she used to do that with a broomstick,” he says.
The training session is one of nine Nacagilevu will attend this week as she prepares for the World Youth Weightlifting Championships, held in Peru in May.
That’s at least 14 hours of training, which, on top of school work, doesn’t leave her a lot of time for anything else. “Train, eat, sleep, repeat,” she says.
Sometimes, it’s hard to drag herself out of bed at 5am for a training session. But Tia turns up, again and again. “I know if I do the work, the hard work will pay off,” she says.
Nacagilevu has always been focused and determined, Joni says.
“When she takes something on she’s like, ‘whatever I can do to be the best, I’ll make it happen’ ... I didn’t know it would get to this point, but I know she would do well.”
A former weightlifter and believer in the discipline’s potential for strength and co-ordination, it was Joni who suggested his two eldest daughters try lifting to condition their bodies for netball and rugby.
“He said, you’re going to commit to this for a year,” Tia remembers.
Aged around 10, Tia wasn’t keen at first. But after a year, she was hooked, dropping all her other sports and beginning to train in earnest.
When his girls started lifting, Joni called his former weightlifting coach, Lester Keene.
“I wanted someone I could trust. He said, bring them down.”
Keene, a life-long athlete and weightlifter who represented New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in the 1990s, has a history of mentoring weightlifters – including Australian Olympian Kiana Elliot.
At 59, he’s still competing – and winning, he says.
Lifting is as much about mindset as it is about muscle, and Nacagilevu’s inner strength is starting to come to the fore, Keene says.
“Tia’s mental game is coming a long way,” he says.
For Nacagilevu, the individual nature of the sport – the “you versus you” – is part of its appeal.
“I have gotten a lot better mentally, to hype myself up and get the work done alone. My only motivation is myself.”
Nacagilevu hopes to step up her training after she graduates this year.
“I feel like I can do a lot more when I’m not having to worry about school.”
Nacagilevu has been competing since 2019, graduating from local to national to international competitions. Peru, where she hopes to clean-and-jerk more than 120kg, will be her biggest competition yet.
“It’s my first time competing against the world,” she says. “I’m excited to show the world who I am, and excited to lift alongside the world’s top lifters, people I’ve been looking up to.”
You can help Nacagilevu fundraise for her trip by donating to her Givealittle campaign.