From Russia with love - and medals

The husband and wife, who met through powerlifting and spent their honeymoon money installing a gym inside their house, have recently returned from the European Championships in Moscow with a European Deadlift title each.

Georgie, who is 30 and originally from Fauls Green, overcame eight Russian competitors to win the 52kg-class title with a lift of 120kg that was 2.5 times her body weight and extended her British record.

David, 32, who hails from Market Drayton, deadlifted 247.5kg to beat 17 rivals to the under 75kg title.

Even more impressively, he placed second overall out of more than 140 lifters in the championships with a lift that was 3.4 times his body weight.

Having vastly exceeding their own expectations, it now sets the couple up perfectly for the World Championships in Russia this October.

“Going into it we were really intimidated because the Russians are quite big and scary!” admitted David. “It was something like out of Rocky IV.

“Weightlifting is part of their education system, it’s very main-stream, it’s a high participation sport. We knew that it would be a really tough competition and we didn’t go into it with massive expectations.

“It was the first time we’d been to Russia, and we just went in hoping we weren’t going to get too badly beaten.

“I knew the lift I wanted, I’d been chasing it for five years. I thought going over there would give me enough pressure to make it happen and it did.

“My wife got very badly injured last year weightlifting, she damaged her hip and she had quite a lot of physiotheraphy to get her fighting fit.

“She was in quite a tough class, up against the defending champion, but that lady went in too arrogant and tried to open on the world record.”

The Hodsons, who live in the village of Hodnet six miles outside of Market Drayton, used to compete against mainland Europeans in the World Drug-Free Powerlifting Federation (WDFPF).

But they recently switched to the Amateur World Powerlifting Congress (AWPC) because it is a more competitive organisation that is home to both the Russians and Chinese athletes.

The couple train together four times a week, for two-and-a-half hours each time, but when they’re not lifting extraordinary weights together, they work for Rosehill Agricultural Trading in Whitchurch.

“I work in chicken vaccines, selling veterinary and pharmaceutical goods,” explained David. “My father-in-law set it up in the 60s.”

In powerlifting, competitors get three lifts which are then divided by their bodyweight to calculate the best lifter. It can include the squat, the bench press, and the deadlift.

“You do get people who do all three,” explained David. “We specialise in the deadlift. The reason I like it is it’s one of the simplest lifts. You get a weighted bar on the ground, and then you pick the bar up and stand bolt upright with your back straight. It doesn’t go above your waist.”

Powerlifting is not an Olympic sport like weightlifting, but it is in the Commonwealth Games. However, David explained the AWPC World Championships, taking place in October, are the sport’s gold standard – and he and his wife were now training towards them.

“If we have a good training cycle and we both manage not to break or tear anything we could be in with a chance,” he said. “We met through training, it’s just something we’ve always done together.

“We’ve been married for over five years now but when we got married our families were very generous. We spent the money converting part of our house into our own gym, rather than a honeymoon!”