After a two-year hiatus, the 35th Men's and 12th Women's National Weightlifting Championships got underway yesterday at the National Sports Council (NSC) Gymnasium amid mixed reaction from the participating weightlifters.

The newly formed ad-hoc committee took the initiative to hold the national championship with participation of 282 weightlifters including 74 females from 75 teams. Despite that the senior players are seemingly not happy as the federation has scrapped prize-money for new national records.

“The weightlifters are disappointed to see cash-awards for new records scrapped. I will now only play for the gold medal rather than trying to create any national record,” SA Games gold-medallist Mabia Akter Simanta said.

BWF joint secretary Shah Jalal Mukul said that they could not arrange money for record setters because of financial constraint.

“We have scrapped prize money, but we are giving Tk 3000 each for winning gold medal and Tk 2000 and Tk 1000 for silver and bronze medals,” Mukul said. “We wanted every participant to return home with happy faces.”

Veteran weightlifter Mollah Sabira Sultana urged the authorities to provide proper facilities to groom up newcomers.

“Today I lifted 63 kilos in snatch, 23 kilo more than a new player who lifted 40 kilos. She needs at least five-year's training to come to my stage,” said Sabira.

NSC coach Kazal Datta also sees a big difference between the experienced and new players. “The new weightlifters are yet to achieve the minimum quality to compete against the seniors. It could have been better had the federation arranged two separate competitions for the youth and senior players,” said Datta.