MOOSE JAW --- It was all just a matter of getting the job done for Moose Jaw’s Rhaea Stinn at the Canadian Powerlifting Union National Championships.
Get the lifts in, record a total, win a national championship and continue the focus on the bigger prizes in the near future.
Safe to say, it went as well as Stinn could have asked Tuesday at the Moose Jaw Exhibition Centre -- six attempts across the three disciplines, six successful lifts, an 84-kg plus women’s equipped championship and the overall women’s Open equipped championship.
“The goal of today was to get through today, get a total here and then the focus is going to be on World Games training for August,” said Stinn, who also won her fifth world championship back in November.
“I needed to get a total here to qualify for Worlds this year, so that was the primary goal and then it was just sort of see how I feel when I wake up and what numbers we decide to put on the bar.”
In the end, Stinn cleared 205 kg in the squat, 215 kg in the bench press and 190 kg in the deadlift for a 610 total and 98.905 points in the International Powerlifting Federation points system. That was also enough to land Stinn the overall Open title in a close finish with B.C.’s Diana Foxall.
Stinn is the reigning gold medalist in the women’s superheavyweight division at the World Games -- which run Aug. 7-17 in Chengdu, China -- and as such has put heavy focus into defending her title at the ultra-elite event.
“It's my fifth one, which is pretty crazy to me, but I'm really excited for it,” Stinn said. “Everything is really unique in just the atmosphere that's there with all the other sports and the style of event it is. So right now I'm not feeling a lot of pressure going in, but I'm sure that that will ramp up as the months go on and it gets closer.
“But it's one of those sports, you have to just lift as much as you can and then see what happens with everybody else. You can't control everybody else, you can control the weights that you put on the bar and that's about all you can do.”
Before that happens, there’s still the remainder of the meet on Friday and Saturday to get through, and as one of the 2025 Nationals organizers, the focus has mainly been in that direction.
“The priority was making sure this is a great event for all the other athletes, so that's sort of where things are at,” Stinn said. “We have an amazing team of support staff volunteers that help us to put this on. So the feedback we've been getting so far, everybody's been really happy. We've already had some phenomenal lifting and it's going to keep going throughout the whole week, so it should be a good time.”
You can click right here for a look at all the results and the upcoming schedule for the remainder of the competition.
