Coach Hamdan believes Agricole is still performing below her potential |14 September 2017
Since the start of the year, weightlifter Clementina Agricole has recorded immense improvement in her results achieved in international meetings competing in the 63kg weight category.
After being crowned African champion in July in Mauritius and Commonwealth champion in Gold Coast, Australia last week, Agricole’s next target is to win the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games to be held next year in Gold Coast, Australia.
With only six months remaining before the Games in April next year, Agricole will embark on intensive training with her personal French/Lebanese trainer Zaher Hamdan. The two have been working together for the past nine months.
An international training camp is on the programme but the venue is yet to be decided. Agricole followed her last training camp in Mauritius prior to last week’s Commonwealth Championship in Australia but she normally trains in Louisiana, USA.
Trainer Hamdan, who has worked with other top Seychellois athletes in the past, said he is happy with Agricole winning competitions but annoyed with her results.
“Frankly and honestly I get very frustrated with her results after each competition as I expect more from her. In training she always lifts 10kg above what she does in competitions. For the last three competitions ‒ the qualification for the French Championship, the French Open and the Commonwealth Championship ‒ each time she was between 7 and 10kg below what she does in training. I think there is still work to be done on her mental preparation so that she is able to do what she is capable of doing in competitions,” said coach Hamdan.
He noted that in June at the French Open, Agricole netted 187kg, then in July in the African Championship she progressed to 191kg, in July in the French Championship she lifted an Olympic total of 194kg and at the Commonwealth Championship she reached 200kg in total.
“She never stops progressing during every competition as she is able to achieve five, six and seven kilogrammes more each time, but for me, she hasn’t reached her maximum potential. She is stronger in training than in competition,” added coach Hamdan.
According to the French/Lebanese coach, Agricole trains very hard and intensively, twice a day for a total of four hours followed by a relaxation programme after each training session.
He hopes that her preparation for the Commonwealth Games, the Indian Ocean Island Games and other competitions she will take part in will help her achieve a good result in the Olympic Games in 2020.
Agricole used to compete in the 58kg weight category for a number of years and has for the past three years moved to the heavier 63kg weight category. Her national records are 87kg in snatch and 115kg in clean & jerk.
Other local athletes coach Hamdan has also worked with are sprinter Ned Azemia and bodybuilder Ziad Al Adou Mekdachi.
At the Southern Regional Senior Athletics Championship in Harare, Zimbabwe in June this year, Ned Azemia of the Port Glaud Athletic Shooting Star club claimed the gold medal for Seychelles in the 400m hurdles in 50.94 seconds.
His national record stands at 50.74 seconds, set during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
Azemia was also part of the 4x100m men’s relay team who won the bronze medal at the Jeux de la Francophonie in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in a Seychelles record time of 40.31 seconds earlier this year.
As for bodybuilder Mekdachi, he won the bronze medal in the 95kg weight category at the Arnold Classic Africa Amateur Bodybuilding Championship in May 2016 in South Africa, then won the Mr Seychelles title for a fifth consecutive time before claiming the overall title during the Eric Favre Indian Ocean bodybuilding, fitness and physique championship on home soil in November 2016.
P. J.