The Nauru factor

Do you know where Nauru is? Well, Nauru is a very small island in the south Pacific, south of the Marshall Islands. The country grabbed headlines in the last Commonwealth Games by notching an incredible tally of 15 medals in one discipline alone - weightlifting.

Considering that the population of this country is just over 10,000, my curiosity got the better of me, prompting me to fix a meeting with my good friend Charles Mifsud, the president of the Malta Weightlifting Association.

Mifsud witnessed this extraordinary feat by the weightlifters at first hand as he was one of the jury members during the actual competition in Manchester. This was the first time that a local official was given such an important assignment during high-profile games.

How did Nauruans manage such a feat? Well, the success story owes its origins to one athlete, Marcus Stephen who was reading for a degree in Melbourne.

He came across Paul Coffa who instantly spotted Stephen's talent for weightlifting. Coffa took the lad under his guidance, spearheading Stephen's rise to fame by winning gold medal at the second time of asking in the Commonwealth Games.

One athlete was enough to spur the nation into euphoria. This little island acted fast. There are now some 50 weightlifting platforms and weightlifting has become a passion. The government has invested heavily in this discipline which has helped to put Nauru on the world map.

In Manchester, the contingent complained that English food was not to their liking. Immediately, the Chef-De-Mission of Nauru was given some 100,000 dollars to make sure that the athletes nourished themselves to their satisfaction.

Somehow, I am still struggling to come up with a decent hypothesis to explain this unprecedented feat. One medal could be the result of a very promising athlete or simply a fluke result. But this was no flash-in-the-pan thing. I may never be able to come up with a concrete answer.

I try to draw a parallel with the situation in Malta. Along the years we have had a handful of promising athletes who have registered some promising results in the discipline. Yet, more often than not, these athlete fade into oblivion and nothing is heard of them anymore.

Being a small discipline, weightlifting fails to attract adequate coverage. In May this year, the Maltese weightlifting contingent gave a very good performance in Germany. Our lads won the 28th edition of the European Small Nations Tournament held in Saarbrucken. They also won the open section of this championship, edging out some top weightlifters in the process. Yet, the media gave the association a cold shoulder.

Weightlifting is primarily an individual sport and given the right physical and mental preparation, an athlete can make the grade. However, athletes have to be patient as it can take years to groom a weightlifter into a world-class athlete.

The Malta Olympic Committee is slowly but surely introducing a long-term plan aimed at producing athletes who can compete alongside the world's elite in some disciplines.

Athletes have to master the art of patience. My concern is that many youngsters jump the gun when it comes to sports development. There is a ladder to climb and a painful process to reach the higher rungs.

Many athletes opt for an easy way out. They savour the glory of success that the first rung provides and then jump off the ladder never to attempt a climb again. This attitude is wrong and sports administrators have an important role to play in planning a training strategy that spans a number of years.

In recent years, Malta has invested considerably in coaching talent. But good coaches alone do not make for a winning formula. Athletes have to be receptive to training methods and trust their coaches in their tactics. We have had a number of cases in Malta where athletes or squads have turned their backs on a discipline simply because they did not agree on the tactics introduced by a coach. Now that's one thing that the Nauruans did not do.

This little nation will be setting its sights on the next edition of the Commonwealth Games to be held in Melbourne in 2006. Incidentally, Mifsud was also elected as vice-president to the Commonwealth Weightlifting Federation (European Group). This committee will be entrusted with identifying the technical officials for the next edition of the Commonwealth Games.

Meanwhile, the success story of Nauru is bound to continue. There are lessons to be learned from this country. As the saying goes: where there is a will, there is a way.