The Home Nations Championship

This past weekend A.T.S coach John Soulsby was down in Cardiff coaching the Scottish powerlifting team who were competing in the Home nations championship. He travelled down with some of the team members on Friday before the competition on the Saturday.

The competition was held at Cardiff and Vale College which turned out to be an amazing venue. The warm up room there was great with a platform for each team to warm up on individually. Everyone weighed in fine and the team had some time to relax and eat before they had to begin warming up. First came the Classic section of the competition, where six members of the team competed.
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First up were the classic (Raw) Ladies, Hannah Beaven who also achieved a British Record Squat at the competition, Rowan Hendry Horne who fought well to achieve her total given she was ill in the lead up to the comp, and Tasmin Campbell who finished off her first year in powerlifting with a great comp. They lifted extremely well and ended up winning their section of the competition doing themselves and the team a huge credit.

Next were the classic men, Scott Mulheron who managed to put in a decent effort considering he only managed to get in to Cardiff at 0030 the night before, William Rogers who managed to compete even though he got locked in the bathroom at the comp and lost a tooth the day before, and Marc Keys. They did themselves proud with some huge numbers being put up. Overall they didn't manage to do as well as their female counterparts however Marc did win the overall best classic male lifter for the competition.


In the afternoon session it was time for the equipped team members. Again the Women were first up with Louise Murray who despite missing her opening squat finished off well, Sophie Barringer who did well even though her lead up to the comp was sporadically changed due to trying to learn how to compete equipped; she decided on the day to lift classic. Michelle Brand who was as consistent as ever representing Scotland.

Finally the equipped men, this portion of the team consisted of William Murray, Stuart Crichton, and Francesco Pelizza. The men were again great and Stuart even gave two toes to the cause after dropping his final deadlift onto his foot.

Overall the team lifted fantastically well and came a very close second behind the Wales team by only 46 wilks points beating the England and Northern Ireland teams. Which is a very very close result. It was also fantastic to meet up with some members of Team GB again as we only get to meet them every so often at larger comps.
It was a great competition and we at A.T.S would like to thank Lucy Cohen, Tanya Bull and the Welsh Powerlifting Association for organising an amazing comp and taking such good care of us over the weekend.

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