Up Close … with former Seychellois weightlifter François Dodin-Determined to win |09 August 2011
It was also the first IOIG held on our islands and one which Dodin went all out and won three golds for Seychelles. His optimism may also have been a great boost for him.
“I did not want to let my people down as they were backing us all the way.”
At the same time, I told myself “why stress, you know you’ve trained hard and you have the willingness to give your best, the rest is in God’s hands.”
Still well composed at 42, Dodin looked like the 24-year-old lifter back in 1993 right after his wins when I was interviewing him for this article.
It was there and then that I was actually introduced to weightlifting.
I knew it is a sport in which a strong person attempt a maximum-weight single lift of a barbell loaded with weight plates. But Dodin was too passionate about it to stop at this point.
“I competed in the 77kg category, meaning I had to keep my weight at least around this much during any competitions,” he said.
“This is how it works, in weightlifting there are two events – the snatch and the clean and jerk.”
Then there is an overall score for which you also get a medal for overall performance also called the Olympic total. This is how he got his three golds in 1993.
This is indeed a ‘strength sport’, I understood that much!
“We went on a training camp to Bulgaria to prepare us for this event.”
Indeed the trainings were not in vain! Apart from his ‘golds’ he won himself R22,500 – R7,500 for each gold medal, three television sets and a return ticket to any Air Seychelles destination.
“This was quite a bit of money at that time, which I used to buy a plot of land with help from my girlfriend.”
But I wanted to know what he did with the television sets, a very amusing question at least that’s what he thought. He kept all three.
Unfortunately, he did not use his return ticket. “I planned to go to Italy to visit my sister but then it did not work out.”
The sad news was that after this IOIG, Dodin had to stop weightlifting on account of a knee injury. He went for an operation in South Africa but has never fully recovered.
Still he did not want to give up the sport altogether and again took part in the 1998 games in Reunion.
“This was a difficult choice. We did control tests to prepare us for this competition and my injury returned, the pain was unbearable.”
“I was unable to train in Reunion; only my coach and I knew about this, but I wanted to compete.”He experimented with different home treatments to calm down the pain.
At last he got a solution……ice!
”I used ice on my knees for half an hour and it worked”, and immediately told his coach. “Are you sure Dodin,” this was the only thing he could say.
So he started training and had to lower his performance and he succeeded to reach his optimum weight.
On the day of the competition itself the ice really helped.
“I did my entire snatch well but clean and jerk was the problem.”
He was weak in the elbows and a bit in the knees but the determined athlete still came home with gold for snatch and silver medals for clean and jerk and overall performance.
And surprisingly after 13 years, Dodin had planned to compete in this IOIG.
“I started training but work also was hectic so I had to quit,” he said a bit disappointed.
Though he won’t be in the games, he’ll surely be supporting his son Archilles who is in the table tennis team and Seychelles for this IOIG. After all he has been there more than once.
But as a National Sports Council employee – the manager of the Stad Linite facilities – Dodin has helped to make the IOIG happen.