TROUT CREEK – With her slim figure, long legs, attractive face and sweet smile, 16-year-old Victoria DuBonnet looks like she should be gracing the cover of a teen fashion magazine rather than winning medals for weight lifting.
“She’s not only unique, she is an ideal student,” said Melody Ogletree, one of DuBonnet’s coaches. “She’s not only strong in her technique, she’s strong mentally and is composed under pressure.”
Her combined talents won DuBonnet a silver medal in weightlifting during the Ontario Junior Winter Games held in Collingwood earlier this month.
Her achievement is all the more spectacular considering the Grade 11 Almaguin Highlands Secondary School (AHSS) student from Trout Creek has only been weightlifting since July of 2007.
A black belt level kickboxer, she said she added weights to her training regime “because it helps to build up my strength. I only intended to do it during the summer, but once I started, I really loved it, and my coaches seemed to see some potential in me, so I kept it up,” she said.
Twice a week DuBonnet travels to North Bay’s YMCA to train with the Norsemen Valkyries Weight Lifting Club. This is in addition to her weekly kickboxing and seasonal school track and field involvements.
“She came in to us last summer as part of a sports conditioning camp,” said Ogletree, “and considering she’s only here twice a week her success is really quite phenomenal. If she wanted to make this her main focus, she could certainly go to the Canadian finals, if not further.”
DuBonnet competed with weightlifters up to 21 years of age with several years of experience, and Ogletree says “she’s focused and has a natural ability not typical of her body type. We usually think of weightlifters as being shorter in the arms and legs, giving them a lower centre of gravity. Despite being taller and longer in limb, she moves quickly and her muscle fibres are explosive, on top of which she has the flexibility gained from her kickboxing training.”
Weighing a very compact 120 pounds, DuBonnet was able to lift 33 kilos (about 73 pounds) in snatch, a quick-lift that requires a great deal of speed, co-ordination and strength. She bettered that by lifting 46 kilos (about 101 pounds) in the clean and jerk, a two-stage lift where the goal is to first get the weight to the shoulders and then extend it the full length of your arms over your head.
“If I stay in weightlifting, my goal would be to lift twice my body weight,” she said, a challenge Olgetree said “is certainly attainable for her.”
Although DuBonnet, whose mother is a kickboxing coach, has been involved in that sport since the age of five, her interest in other athletic sports has blossomed since she started attending AHSS.
“I was home schooled until last year,” she said, “so going to high school really opened my eyes to all the other sports that I could participate in. That’s what got me in to track and field, and ultimately led to the weight training.”
A perfectionist in all things, Dubonnet is an honour student who admits she loves taking on challenges and clears her mind with a 30-minute jog each evening.
“I know I set high standards for myself,” she said, “and I have lots of perseverance. If I continue with the weight training, I would want to go all the way to the Olympics.”
“She’s not afraid of hard work, that’s for sure,” said Ogletree, “and she’s never afraid to try and lift more weight, in fact she asks to do that. That lack of fear is also unique with female weightlifters. She wants to be exhausted at the end of the session. I think that’s what drives her, she loves that feeling. No matter what sport she might choose to participate in, any coach would be delighted to have her on the team.”
While sports run in DuBonnet’s family, with her brother Nicolas also involved in martial arts and her step-father Neville Beachy an arm-wrestling champion, she admits her classmates were a little surprised when she told them about her silver medal.
“Their mouths just sort of dropped open,” she said. “Girls don’t usually sit around and talk about weightlifting.”
Editorial
