Rebeka Koha & Ritvars Suharevs First German Bundesliga Competition *Suharevs Clean & Jerks*

Meanwhile in Germany …

Yesterday I drove down to Plauen to meet Rebeka Koha and Ritvars Suharevs for their first German bundesliga weightlifting competition. If you have never met them, let me tell you they are both very friendly and easy to talk to, which makes filming them super easy. Same goes for their coach Eduards Andruskevics.

They competed for Chemnitzer AC, the same club Max Lang lifts in.

Both had solid performances. Rebeka, weighing in at 57.1kg, told me beforehand that it will be more like training for her (she predicted 90/107). Understandable, since the day before they flew in from Rome where they are in training camp with the Italian team.

Rebeka went 6/6 with 86, 88 and 90kg in the snatch and 100, 104, 107kg in the clean and jerk, equalling her Rio performance.

Ritvars, weighing in at 79kg, went 3/3 in the Snatch with 140, 147 and 151kg, which is just 3kg of his personal best. In the Clean and jerk he lifted 170, 176 and missed 182kg.

Ritvars’ Clean & Jerks.

Below are Rebeka’s lifts.

Update: All Warm Up Area Snatches and Clean & Jerks!

Update 27.01.2017: Rebeka’s Clean & Jerks!

Update 23.01.2017: Ritvars’ snatches

Bundesliga Weightlifting Competition Format

A couple of words about the competition format.

This was new for me (it was the first bundesliga event I attended) as well as the Latvians. Unlike normal weightlifting competitions (rising bar), this one followed a round based system, similar what you have in powerlifting.

Each team sends 6 competing athletes (each team can have 2 spare athletes in case of injuries). One of these spare lifters can only jump in for either the snatch or the clean and jerk, not both. If someone is injured after the 2nd snatch – the spare lifter can not do the 3rd snatch attempt, only all clean and jerks.

The lifters are divided into two groups.

In our case Rebeka and Ritvars were in separate groups.

Everybody in group 1 one does their first snatch attempts. Then everybody does their second attempts…, then third attempts. Once group 1 finishes snatches it is time for group 2 to start snatching.

After snatches there were 15 minutes break, before the same format was continued for the clean and jerks.

Relativpunkte

Results are compared using a point system, “Relativpunkte”, which allows to compare lifters across weight classes and gender.

You can download a Relativpunkte table here.

These work like this:

Best Snatch - Relativpunkte + Best Clean & Jerk - Relativpunkte = Result

Let’s do the example with Rebeka’s lifts.

She weighed in at 57.1kg. So that Relativpunkte table tells us she gets 22.5 Relativpunkte.

90 - 22.5 + 107 - 22.5 = 152 points for her team!

Do this for all athletes and add up the points to get the team score.

For our competition this meant that Chemnitzer AC won with 771.6 to 567.4 points over KG Plauen-Rodewisch.

Here is the results sheet:

Overall I think it was fun event, even though I am not a fan of the flight system.

Questions for the Germans here: Have there been bundesliga events that used the rising bar system?

Update: I received this clarifying comment.

Re Bundesliga: Relativpunkte are calculated the following way

max(Best Snatch - Relative Weight, 0) + max(Best Clean & Jerk - Relative Weight, 0) = Result

which means you can’t end up with negative points. This isn’t much of a concern for Bundesliga events, but can be an issue for lower level leagues.

Also, there are leagues (for example Frankenliga) which use Sinclair points.

On the round based system: It’s always used in higher level leagues such as Bundesliga. Otherwise there would be a high probability that a lifter has to follow himself, because of the heterogeneity of lifters.

There are however also competitions that use the rising bar system (local district competitions).