Haworth Leads the Way to Athens

Cheryl Haworth and Tara Cunningham again will represent the United States in Olympic women’s weightlifting. The challenge now is to do in Athens what they did in Sydney by winning medals.

Men’s super-heavyweight Shane Hamman has a different agenda -- get the medal he wasn’t yet ready to win in 2000.

Haworth, the 296-pound super-heavyweight who took home a bronze medal from Sydney at age 17, and Cunningham, a returning gold medalist at 105 1/2 pounds, easily secured spots for the Athens Games during Saturday’s U.S. Olympic trials.

Hamman, 185-pounder Oscar Chaplin III and 170-pounder Chad Vaughn qualified for the men’s team by holding onto the rankings they brought into the trials.

Each lifter’s U.S. team ranking was based on a percentage comparing the total amount each lifted to the world-qualifying standard in his or her weight class in a series of competitions, not just the trials. Haworth and Cunningham were easily ahead before increasing their totals Saturday, Haworth to 110.01%, Cunningham to 109.23%.

Hamman’s 903 3/4 pounds were less than the 920 1/4 that he lifted at the 2000 trials, when he jumped from No. 5 to No. 2 with a series of big lifts to make it to Sydney. Chaplin, also a 2000 Olympian, held second place despite completing only one of four lifts before withdrawing because of knee tendinitis.

Vaughn held onto the final men’s slot when fourth-ranked Pete Kelley injured a hamstring on his first attempt in the clean and jerk, in which the bar is raised first to the chest and then overhead. Before getting injured, Kelley set an American weight-class record of 380 1/4 pounds in the snatch, in which the bar is raised above the head without stopping.

The 230-pound Kelley attempted a 473 3/4-pound clean and jerk that would have put him on the team but couldn’t raise the bar past his knees before grabbing his hamstring in pain and limping off the stage.

“I think I tore it pretty bad, but I had to try it. What else was there to do?” said Kelley, a 1996 Olympian who was cheered by a hometown crowd of about 1,000. “You’ve got to go for the Olympics.”

Hamman, who holds every U.S. record, probably must raise 50 pounds more than he ever has to medal in Athens.

“I’m confident about lifting well,” said Hamman, who was 10th in Sydney. “I know what to expect now, and I know what I have to do now to get a medal.”

Haworth put up 270 pounds in the snatch and 330.7 pounds in the clean and jerk for a total of 600.7 pounds -- more than the 573 she lifted at the 2000 trials. She might have been tempted to do more, but she already had first place wrapped up.

Third-place Cara Heads, a 165-pounder from Costa Mesa, enjoyed the best meet of her career by lifting 507 pounds.

Cunningham, known then as Tara Nott, initially won the silver at 105 1/2 pounds in Sydney but traded it for a gold three days later when Bulgaria’s Izabela Dragneva failed a drug test.