BASINGSTOKE powerlifter Beverley Rodgers returned from the second Commonwealth Powerlifting Championships held in Potchefstroom in South Africa, with fist full of medals.

England sent a large team of athletes to this competition and Rodgers was looking to improve on her fourth overall from Vancouver two years before.

Rodgers said: “I received a huge amount of support from family and friends alike who made generous donations to help me take the opportunity to once again represent my country, with sponsorship hard to come by for Masters lifters in this sport.

“My training had been going well under the ever watchful eye of Jake Downes of Donut Barbell and I went in hoping for a personal best or two and possibly a shot at regaining the Commonwealth benchpress record I had previously held.

The competition started well with an opening squat of 112.5kg followed by120kg and new PB of 125kg which secured a silver medal.

Next up was Rodgers’ favourite discipline, the benchpress and as was the case at the recent World Championships her opening lift was sufficient to take the gold medal.

Having opened on 77.5kg and finished with 82.5kg.

She just missed extending her own British record and new Commonwealth one of 86kg as the judges deemed it to be a fail as they saw slight up and down movement of the bar during the ascent.

This gave the Basingstoke lifter a 10kg lead over South African Vicki Botha in the overall competition going into the final event the deadlift.

As Botha was the lighter lifter, in the event of a draw she would take the title.

Rodgers opened with a 130kg deadlift, followed by a tougher than expected 140kg second lift and Botha lifted 10kg more to stay ahead.

For a final lift the English lifter loaded the bar with 147.5kg equal to her PB, but Rodgers run out of steam by then and just could not finish the lift on the day. Botha added 2.5kg for her final lift to win overall by this margin.

Afterwards Rodgers said: “Clearly I was devastated to have missed out on overall gold by such a small margin, but I returned home with three silver medals (squat, deadlift and total) plus a gold (bench) and a squat PB, so a definite improvement on the same Championships two years previous and something to continue to build on.

“I will now look to try and qualify for next years international squad at the British Masters qualifier in December and the British Bench Championships in January."