Reaching first weightlifting nationals at age 42 a huge win for Ottawa mom

By Keiran Gorsky

There was a hand-written note and a bright bouquet of roses on Amanda Nemeth’s kitchen table when she returned from the 2026 Senior Canadian Weightlifting Championships south of Montreal. Nemeth was greeted with a heartfelt message from her husband Alec and a frozen treat from her son Maverick.

“(My son) really desperately wanted me to know that he left me two tubs of ice cream in the freezer,” Nemeth laughed. “Given that I had to cut weight, I haven’t tasted ice cream in a while, and so he wanted me to know that the two tubs of cookie dough ice cream were for me.”

It’s no easy task moulding your body into elite competitive shape as you near and surpass 40. For Nemeth, who took up weightlifting at age 39, there will always be some lingering question as to whether she can keep this up indefinitely.

“I’m equal parts sunshine and rainbows and gratitude, but also I’m like, I’m 42, the deeper I get into my 40s, it is just biologically harder for me to keep getting better at this,” she said.

Of course, building an athletic career later in life can offer some advantages. In Nemeth’s case, she was very grateful to have a fully-formed support system.

The competition in Nemeth never dissipated even as she drifted away from competitive environments. The mother of two grew up competing in gymnastics but spent most of her life as a coach.

She started training in crossfit after the birth of her children and found that array of precise, technical movements not totally dissimilar from what she was used to. Nemeth took a job with Nepean’s CANAM Strength and Conditioning, where she still leads development sessions for young athletes between the ages of 8 and 13.

She found herself surrounded on all sides by people thirsting for the heat of competition. With a barbell coach right there, and the opportunity to train twice per week, Nemeth couldn’t say no.

Her daily training regimen doubled and tripled in length, but she adapted better and faster than she ever anticipated. Her coach at CANAM, Randy Williams, who she has continued working with online since he relocated to British Columbia, designed a training routine tailored to her busy schedule.

“It might not look like what 20-year-old, childless people are doing, who have a whole lot more hours in the day to pursue this, but let’s just go ahead and act like it’s still possible,” Nemeth described the challenge.

The competitor in Nemeth burned bright, but success was just as much in the head. She was not immune to errant thoughts as to how unlikely all of this was. Instead of blocking out less appealing narratives, Nemeth took a certain pleasure in rewriting them.

“Thinking that something’s not possible, it’s like seeing it as this big fish that I’m never going to catch,” she explained. “And then I catch the fish, and I’m like, ‘What fish are still there in the ocean?’”

Williams told her one day she was quite close to a qualifying score – as is often the case in weightlifting, where elite competition sometimes takes the form of a bit of a secret society, Nemeth had no clue what he meant. After some digging online, Nemeth eventually deduced she was close to qualifying for senior provincials – something that had never been on her radar.

Qualify she did. She eventually transitioned from the master’s category for competitors over 30 to the senior elite level reserved for the top athletes in the country. After a training session late in 2024, Nemeth and Williams looked at her lift total in some disbelief. She was 1 kg short of a qualifying score for nationals.

Maybe nothing had to be impossible. Come what may, Nemeth decided, she was going to qualify for nationals in the next three years.

The 2025 Ontario bronze medallist thought she had secured a spot at this year’s Canadians, but that was thrown into jeopardy three weeks before the competition due to a rounding calculation misunderstanding. Weightlifting Canada hadn’t published qualifying scores before many qualifying competitions were held, so provincial federations were left to do their own arithmetic based on international standards.

When Weightlifting Canada released their own marginally higher numbers earlier this year, Nemeth was one of the unlucky few bumped out of a qualifying position.

“I was kind of faced with this thing that I busted my butt to do, and you know, checked all the boxes, and I’m super excited, and now I’m being told that I may not be able to compete,” Nemeth recalled.

Fortunately, Nemeth and others were re-entered into the competition after the Ontario Weightlifting Association advocated on their behalf. Reaching the new qualifying standard would have been a massive hurdle for Nemeth, who was recovering from a concussion when the new numbers were released.

She had every reason to be apprehensive when she arrived in La Prairie, QC, where she had the lowest entry total in her weight class. As ever, Nemeth took the opportunity to rewrite the narrative before it threatened to overwhelm her.

Weightlifters are not always a terribly extroverted bunch in the heat of competition, where everyone has taken great pains to construct some impenetrable headspace. Even so, Nemeth maintained, competitors still quietly have each other’s backs.

“The people weren’t scary,” Nemeth underlined. “I mean, they were all just people.”

Nemeth was able to settle into her own fortified headspace. She missed her opening 78 kg snatch but managed the lift on her second attempt. She followed it up with an 81 kg lift, breaking her own Ontario Masters snatch record.

The subsequent clean-and-jerk didn’t go quite as smoothly. On her final attempt at a 96 kg lift, Nemeth brought the barbell over her head, but was credited with a miss since her elbows weren’t completely straight.

Nemeth’s first clean-and-jerk lift of 93 kg stood as her best, giving her a combined total of 174 kg. That was good for 13th overall out of 19 women’s 69 kg competitors, while her snatch mark was ninth-best. Nemeth could hardly be happier with her performance.

“I have no regrets,” she underlined. “I couldn’t have done anything differently. I couldn’t have prepared any better.”

Back at home, Nemeth is endlessly grateful to have the support of her family. She offers a comforting message, but one that becomes too easy to forget as you get older – there’s always time to try something new.

“My 35-year-old self would be so proud right now,” Nemeth likes to say. “It’s such a silly thing that we have to become adults and forget what whimsy is.”

National bronze & gold medals for Ottawa lifters

CANAM product Kristen Pearn was Ottawa’s top performer at the mid-May competition, winning a bronze medal in the women’s 77 kg snatch. She failed to record a successful clean-and-jerk lift, however. Pearn is relocating to Stratford and is planning to represent Burlington Barbell Club at future events.

Meanwhile, Ottawa’s Rory van Ulft, who has triple Nemeth’s experience in weightlifting despite being a third of her age, captured the first official global title of her career at the IWF World Youth Championships in Colombia earlier this month, after previously topping the Canadian U21 championships with a total that was better than her weight category’s winning mark at the senior nationals.

Read More: 13-year-old weightlifter at last gets the world title/record she’s long been pressing for

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