IWF Drops The Ball, World Records Don't Count
If you watched the 2015 IWF Masters World Cup, you probably witnessed Aimee Everett setting a new Master's World Record in the Snatch. Except, here's the thing: you didn't. Yes, the IWF Masters website says the current WR in the 69kg weight class for W35 division is 75kg. Yes, Aimee Everett successfully hit 78 and 81kg in her first two snatch attempts. And yes, the event organizers also thought those were WR snatches and treated them as such (including extra doping testing to insure the legality of the lifts). But none of that matters because the actual W35 World Record snatch in the 69kg weight class is 85kg, and happened at the Pan Am Masters Championships in early June by Rachel York. And apparently that lift never made it into the IWF's Records webpage. So IWF drops the ball, doesn't know its own records, and falsely leads two female lifters (Jodi Vaughn also mistakenly thought she broke World Records in the 58kg weightclass for the same reason) to think they'd set new World Records, but there's no recourse for the lifters other than to politely suggest that "hopefully next time before a huge international meet the record can be updated so the athletes can be prepared." That quote is from Aimee Everett's instagram, where she speaks out about this "terrible, unfair, heartbreaking" mistake on IWF's part and I can only think that she's handling this way WAY better than I would have. IWF is a big deal, an important organization that is generally pretty good at its job. Unfortunately they really screwed the pooch in this situation. While they haven't really responded to this, hopefully they'll apologize and strive to improve this system.
Aug 18, 2015
