From pain to podium: Kiwi teen lifters make history

Newsroom

15-05-2025

Before she stepped onto the platform in Lima, Peru, Olivia Selemaia felt the weight of past failure pressing down on her. Warming up to take that same world stage, Mollie King felt her back 'pop' while hoisting 85kg of iron.
It could easily have derailed both teenage Kiwi weightlifters.
Instead, they pushed through the pain and the mental pressure to claim five medals between them at the world junior and youth championships earlier this month – the best performance by a New Zealand weightlifting team at a global event.
Selemaia's silver in the 71kg class, clinched by lifting a total of 235kg, is the highest a Kiwi has ever finished at an International Weightlifting Federation competition.
For the talented 19-year-old lifter from south Auckland, the performance in Peru was a huge redemption, after she 'bombed' at the last world junior championships in Spain eight months ago.
'I didn't know how to lift the bar. I just blanked out,' she says of that momentary setback.
'It was playing on my mind in Peru, but I had a good chat with my coach Simon [Kent] the night before and we got it out of the way.
'During the competition, I was really nervous, but I knew I was prepared – my training had been consistent and I believed in myself. I went out there and gave it my all, and I didn't walk off that platform with any regrets.'
Her snatch lift of 106kg – earning a bronze medal – was a personal best, and her clean and jerk of 129kg (another bronze) was only 1kg off the heaviest she's lifted in training.
She smashed New Zealand and Oceania senior and junior records, and her overall performance would have put her in seventh place at last year's Olympic Games (Selemaia missed qualifying for Paris by a couple of kilos). And it's fuelled her desire to compete at the LA 2028 Games.
Mollie King stunned with her performance at the world junior and youth champs in Peru. Photo: Bowen Stuart
For King, the head girl at Whanganui Girls' College who holds down two part-time jobs and trains on her own, the world championship was as much a mental victory as it was physical. A recurring back injury struck just as she was warming up behind the stage.
'Suddenly I had this big mental challenge that flipped my entire competition upside down,' the +81kg youth lifter says.
'I had to switch my focus from, 'Get the best out of the experience and get on that podium' to 'Just give it everything you've got, because it's going to be a fight now'. Mentally it was really hard.'
Nevertheless, 17-year-old King rose above the injury and lifted her best-ever clean and jerk of 126kg (a personal best of 11kg) to win silver, and a personal best total of 223kg to collect bronze. She broke multiple New Zealand records, too.
Their podium finishes anchored a startling overall performance by the New Zealand women's team – six of the seven Kiwis in Peru – who finished sixth of 54 nations. It underscores the growth of women's weightlifting in New Zealand.
'It's affirmation we're on the right track,' says Kent, who's also Weightlifting NZ president Simon Kent. 'We're continuing our person-first philosophy, making sure we have quality training environments where our female athletes can thrive. We just have to stay on course.'
Sending a strong team to next year's Commonwealth Games, where weightlifting is one of the 10 sports at the scaled-back event, is their next focus. And both Selemaia and King want to be there.
Crunching numbers, crushing records
Numbers aren't important to Olivia Selemaia (best known as Livi).
'Half the time I forget what my PBs are to be honest. Simon keeps up with them for me,' she laughs.
Even the three world championship medals she brought home last week are, in her eyes, 'just a bonus'.
'What I really won that day was progress in our sport for the young athletes coming up,' Selemaia says. 'Usually overseas, people don't know who the New Zealanders are. But we made a cultural statement, doing the haka for our athletes, and we showed we're capable of competing on the world stage. We don't want to be underdogs.'
Livi Selemaia finished 11th at the world senior champs last year, aged 18. Photo: Bowen Stuart
Selemaia has certainly made her presence felt – boosting her lift totals by 25kg in the past year. Kent says a focus on her health has probably made the difference in her performance.
Kent has learned a lot about 'women's performance health', after five years coaching Tokyo Olympian Megan Signal. 'Simon keeps learning with us,' Selemaia says. 'He guides us through the right nutrition and our menstrual health. I'm not 100 percent healthy yet, but I'm improving a lot.'
Signal, now running the Papatoetoe Olympic Weightlifting Club where Selemaia trains, is a mentor to the teenage lifter. 'If I struggle mentally, I just hit her up for advice because she's been through it all,' Selemaia says.
In 2023, Selemaia left Sancta Maria College to concentrate on making the Paris Olympics. Just 17, she went to her first world senior championships in Saudi Arabia. 'That's when a door opened for me to qualify for the Olympics,' she says. 'I was so close – just a couple of kilos short of going.'
Last year, she was 11th at the senior worlds in Bahrain. 'It was a massive step forward for Livi,' says Kent, who's worked with her since she was 12.
She's committed to training full-time but also works for the Lift for Gold programme – visiting south Auckland schools to introduce kids to weightlifting. 'We'd love to work our way around the country. We need more young athletes to join the sport,' she says.
Selemaia was nine when she started lifting at a cross fit gym with her mum, and narrowed her focus three years later. 'If I hadn't found sport because of Mum, I'd be a bit lost,' she says. 'I enjoyed the independence weightlifting brought me and it challenged me mentally.'
One of her biggest challenges, though, has been financially. Her Olympic campaign cost her around $40,000. All of the Kiwi athletes in Peru paid their own way.
'It's really hard because it's been just me and Mum for a very long time,' Selemaia says. 'We've had the support of our family and community, but it's hard asking people for money.'
At 13, Livi Selemaia won two Pacific Games medals in Samoa, inspired by former world discus champion Beatrice Faumuina. Photo: NZOC.
Her collapse at last year's world champs came out of the blue: 'I was doing the numbers consistently in training, but on the day of competition, I became disassociated from myself,' she says. 'I became non-verbal. I didn't know what was going on. I just bombed.'
But it's hardened her resilience. 'I took the time to deal with my emotions. I had Megan on that trip, and she didn't leave me alone for too long. I came home and I could lift again,' Selemaia says.
To qualify for next year's Commonwealth Games, she must compete in the Commonwealth champs in India in August, the senior world champs in Norway in October, and next year's Oceania champs in Samoa.
'There's still a lot of work to do,' she says. 'But I won't let my guard down till I've retired, and that's not any time soon.'
Exams, fries and sport on the world stage
Mollie King went straight back to class at Whanganui Girls' after arriving home from Peru, quickly shifting her focus to studying for NCEA Level 3.
She's returned to her shifts at the local fish and chip shop, where she's been frying for the past four years, and working at the counter at Mitre 10.
And she's kept training, alone, in her home gym. Discipline and routine help her through hectic days.
'Right now, I wouldn't change it for the world,' she says.
'Consistent routines are huge when you've got so much going on – trying to juggle a full school day with assignments due, training, then going to the pools to recover, osteo and massage, and holding down two part-time jobs.
'Having the backing of my family, my teachers and my coach is humungous.'
Mollie King competing at the world junior and youth weightlifting championships in Peru. Photo: Bowen Stuart
Her mum, Tania King, now chief executive of Sport Whanganui, was a past principal of Whanganui Girls'. 'So I had a relationship with the teachers before I even came here, and that's just built,' she says. 'They've always believed in me, and I'm so grateful they took me on as head girl, fully knowing I would be away competing throughout the year.'
Mitre 10 have been key to King competing overseas – with sponsorship, a part-time job and fundraising sausage sizzles in front of the hardware store. She walked around the city centre handing out sponsorship proposals, and her mum sold wine to help fill the coffers.
This was King's second world youth weightlifting championship – last year was also in Lima, where she finished eighth overall. 'This time I put a lot more focused on the job at hand – putting my best self on that platform,' she says.
King competed the day after Selemaia, and as you'd expect, fed off her record-breaking performance. 'We all did the haka for her, and seeing her up on the podium made me so proud. I just had that feeling that I knew I could do it, too,' she says.
This year, King has been plagued by back issues. It started in training – 'I felt a big pop… it wasn't major, but it was definitely sore. I got osteo and massage to mend it,' she says.
'I went down to Wellington champs feeling a bit iffy, and pushed it on my snatches and I felt it go again. So we were back to square one.
'So then we just focused on getting me to Peru injury-free. I could feel it a little bit at a training camp in Auckland before we left, but nothing major.'
Then it wasn't until she was warming up for her competition in Lima, with an 85kg snatch, that she felt that familiar pop again.
'She sat down and said 'I'm gone',' Kent remembers. 'But we helped her work through it and she went out and competed.'
Selemaia was out the back with her. 'We just channelled all our competitiveness, and I put it all out there. To walk away with two medals was pretty awesome,' says King.
'If I can be in prime condition and injury-free in India in a few months, it's going to be dangerous.'
King and her coach, Gabi Peach – who couldn't be in Peru after recently having a baby – have talked about King putting her hat in the ring for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
'If it happens, it happens. It's a nice long-term goal and there's a whole lot more on my horizon yet,' says King, who plans to study business, and sport and human performance, at the University of Waikato next year. 'I've always said the 2032 Brisbane Olympics – I'll be there. I'm still young and trying to figure out where I see myself in those events.'
As the only Olympic weightlifter in Whanganui, and her coach in Hamilton, King stays motivated through her passion for the sport.
'On the surface it can be really hard at times, but if you dive that little bit deeper you find your why. And mine is because I love lifting. And I love having a bigger goal to strive towards. The gym is my safe place and I love the community.'