Belize’s Power-lifting Team Returns Home with Gold & Bronze Medals

They competed for the first time regionally in 2018, as power-lifters, and came back with medals. That set the stage for the Belize Power-lifting Association to once again prepare a team to represent the Jewel beyond our borders. They spent last week in Panama at the North American Power-lifting Championships, where the eight-member team, despite challenges, captured four medals. President Khalid Usher, William Murillo, Jacqueline Alas, and Edith Ruiz earned bronze medals, while Alida Sharp and Robert Williams earned gold.

Alida Sharp

Alida Sharp, Gold Medalist, N.A.P.F. Championships

“So far, I’ve earned a gold medal in my category (Masters II – fifty-two kilos) and I also broke the North American squat record and then set a new one and then I broke the bench press record and set a new one. I tied the dead-lift record and I broke the point total record and set a new one. When you have a goal that you’ve been working on for such a long time, I set this goal over a year ago. We had last year’s national meet in June of 2021 and I set this goal shortly after that. So to have worked all year-long, losing the weight slow enough so that I could keep my strength that I had at the higher body weight, it’s been a challenge. You know, there were a lot of tears, a lot of doubt and fear along the way, but to have made it to this point and to have accomplished three of my four goals, I’m just so excited. On the same day that I competed, Edith Ruiz also competed in the fifty-seven-kilo class in the open and she placed third. So she won a bronze medal. So on the very opening day, we took home a gold and a bronze for Belize. This morning, Jacqueline Alas competed in the sixty-three-kilo open class and she also earned a bronze medal.”