Scottish masters success for Alex

Pitlochry weightlifter Alex Phillips added another title to his tally at the weekend’s Scottish Masters.

Alex, lifting in the 81kg (55 to 59 years) category in Arbroath, returned home with an impressive 36th national honour.

Despite training preparations being impacted by Covid-19, he snatched 42kg and clean and jerked 62kg for a 104kg total.

“I had been very confident going into the competition in Arbroath as I had been training well and the strongest I had been for several years,”Alex told the PA.

“Unfortunately all that changed when I tested positive for Covid and I only came out of self-isolation on the Thursday before the competition.

“This obviously hampered my chances of producing a good performance but I was happy to at least manage a total, although I was disappointed I only got my opening snatch.

“But I was happy that I was successful with all three clean and jerks.”

On what is up next, Alex added:“There are two more Masters competitions later on in the year, with the dates and venues still to be finalised.

“I have also been put forward to represent Scotland as a technical official at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, although I haven’t received confirmation yet.”

Alex is the secretary of Pitlochry Weightlifting Club and the past couple of years has been a real challenging time.

Their town training base, Live Active Atholl, is still being used by the NHS as a vaccination centre.

Alex said:“It has been very hard to keep training in the past two years, with the training facilities being closed for two long periods because of lockdown due to Covid.

“In fact, there were no competitions for me to compete in from March 1, 2020 until November 7, 2021.

“It was because of the resumption of normal competitions in September 2021 that I started training properly at Bell’s Sports Centre.

“And as for the club, this is the most uncertain period in our 47 year history.

“Nothing can be done until we can get back into the leisure centre. Also, most of our members have moved onto other things in the past two years and it looks very much like we will have to start the club from scratch again.

“Hopefully some of the old members will come back because I can’t do it on my own.”