Among Queenstown’s unsung sports heroes is a world record-holding powerlifter who flew off this week to his fifth world champs.
Tim Monigatti, 27, who finished second in his under-74kg category at last year’s worlds in Malta, competing in squat, bench and deadlift, is off to Lithuania this time where he’ll be trying to reclaim one world record and defend another.
At last year’s champs he set a squat world record and also the deadlift one, but that latter record was broken by another competitor about five minutes later.
He then broke his own squat record at a competition in London in February, lifting 288.5kg, and reclaimed the deadlift record which this time he held for about a month.
Monigatti says he’s determined to reclaim that record next week.
He’s been nominated or seeded third — ‘‘one of the people I’m up against is the top-ranked powerlifter of all time’’.
Monigatti — whose flights and accommodation are being covered by powerlifting gear and apparel company SBD — moved to Queenstown in 2021 from Hamilton, where he got into the sport nine years ago.
‘‘I was going to the gym anyway, I was doing that stuff anyway, and then I just sort of got obsessed with it.’’
He also finished second in the junior category in the U83kg category at his second worlds in Sweden in 2019 — he’s also competed at worlds in Canada (2018) and South Africa (2022).
Since taking up the sport he’s trained six days a week — currently in his garage — and between one and two and a-half hours each session.
Fortunately he has a sympathetic partner in Veronica Manning, who also went to the worlds in South Africa — she’s not currently competing but is president of the Southern Powerlifting Association.
Since the prime age for his sport is 25 to 35, he should have a while to go yet.
As for what he likes about it, he says it’s just about getting better and better, and the fact progress is measurable.
