Spotlight: Tara Nott, Weightlifting

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Posted: Friday July 02, 1999 11:44 AM

Weightlifting is just one sport in Nott's repertoire. Tom Kimmell

Born: May 10, 1972, Del Rio, Texas

Hometown: Stilwell, Kansas

Residence: Colorado Springs, Colo. (United States Olympic Training Center)

Upcoming Event: Pan Am Games, July 24-August 8, Winnipeg, Canada

Worth Watching Because: These days it is hardly unusual for a female athlete to include weight training as part of her overall conditioning regimen. It is rare, however, for a female athlete to completely abandon her team sport and take up competitive weightlifting -- but that's just what Nott did four years ago. Today, the 5' 1", 105-pound soccer player-turned-weightlifter is the reigning national champion in the clean and jerk at the 48 kg class.

Nott began her collegiate athletic career in 1990 on the Colorado College women's soccer team. As a freshman, she was named an All-America and went on to compete in the 1990 and 1991 Final Four. Nott also won a gold medal in soccer at the 1995 U.S. Olympic Festival. After failing to make the 1996 U.S. Olympic team, Nott took a post with the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games.

Nott started lifting weights in Atlanta to keep in shape, and before long she was confident enough to ask Mike Gattone, one of the U.S. national weightlifting coaches, to give her a tryout. Having played college soccer, high school volleyball and basketball and competed in gymnastics as a child, it didn't take Nott long to prove herself in yet another new sport. In her first competition, just eight months after she started lifting, Nott won the 48 kg class in the clean and jerk at the 1996 U.S. National Championships. Nott attributes her quick success to the upper body strength she gained during her days as a gymnast and the leg strength she built over the course of her soccer playing years.

Nott, now 27, is a three-time national champion (1996, 1997, 1999) and holds U.S. records in the clean and jerk and the total (combined points of the clean and jerk and snatch competitions) at 48 kg class. After the Pan Am Games, Nott will shift her focus to the World Championships this November in Athens, Greece where she hopes to place in the top five. Nott is also pumped for 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where women's weightlifting will make its debut as a medal sport.

Greatest Success: National Champion1996, 1997, 1999; Sixth place 1998 World Championships (48 kg class)

Quote/Unquote: Nott's motto: "You can absolutely do anything if you have the belief and the desire. You're going to have setbacks, but it's important to get back up and keep going. It's a journey."

Cool Fact: Nott is one of only two U.S. women who is able to clean and jerk double her own body weight.

Come back soon for a new women's sports Spotlight.

 

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