Like many of you, I watch a lot of weightlifting on the internet. You probably know the 2014 World Championships happened in Kazakhstan a few months ago. Fortunately for us, the footage of these championships gets put on YouTube in its entirety, so we can basically see the whole meet from the convenience of our computers. It’s a godsend for weightlifting junkies.

I want to tell you about something I saw when I watched the women’s 48 kg class (105 lbs.). One of the athletes in this particular group was a Turkish gal named Sibel Ozkan. Those of you who follow Olympic weightlifting might know that name. She’s been on the international scene for the last six or seven years, consistently winning medals at the World, European, and Olympic championships. Basically, she’s one of the best lifters on the planet in her weight class.

At the 2014 Worlds, she finished 2nd in the snatch and was in very tight competition for the overall medals. When she came out for her first C&J of 103 kg (226 lbs.), I noticed she was wearing a very thick weightlifting belt. It looked like some kind of regular belt that had been beefed up with extra tape and padding or something. She’s a tiny little thing, so it looked like she was wearing a small inner tube around her waist. Obviously, my first thought was, “She’s probably fighting a back injury.”

She completed her opening C&J, and that’s when I started noticing the stuff I’m writing this article about. As soon as she got the down signal and dropped the bar, she started crying hysterically. It was instantaneous. The bar hadn’t even bounced and she was already sobbing uncontrollably. She walked off the platform, into the arms of her coach, who was congratulating her like she had just set a world record. She continued weeping hard as she walked back into the warmup room. Now, we’ve all seen athletes burst into tears of joy after they nail a big championship lift. But this was different. It was her opening attempt, which meant she still had two more big lifts to think about, and she was already having what looked like a total meltdown. Once again, I immediately assumed some kind of injury might have been the cause of the tears.

A few minutes later, she came out for her 2nd attempt with 105 kg (231 lbs.). She made this lift too, and this time she erupted into a combination of tears and ferocious screams after she dropped it to the platform. She walked off the platform shaking her little fists and howling like a wolf, while her coaches went nuts with excitement. I don’t mind telling you…I was pretty moved by this. I’ve watched thousands (maybe millions) of weightlifters compete, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anybody with the kind of unrestrained emotion and fire we saw from Sibel at this meet. I started to wonder if a back injury really was the cause of it all, or if it was something else.

She failed on her third attempt with 108 kg (238 lbs.), and this time she walked off the platform with a relatively calm face, disappointed but still proud. Her 2nd attempt sealed up the silver medal, so it was a successful day. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about her after I finished watching and went on to the rest of my day. I couldn’t escape the feeling that there must have been something heavy going on inside this girl when she stepped on the platform that day. Lifters get pumped and emotional after big performances, but this was different. I know it’s a tired old cliché, but she was lifting like her life depended on it.

I decided to do a little homework on this woman, because I wanted to know more about her. And I’m glad I was able to find some information about her life, because now I’m going to share it with you. Trust me, you’ll be glad you read this…and you’ll find a connection to your own life and career somewhere.

Good Old Wikipedia

“Thank God, she has a Wikipedia page!” That’s what I said when I looked into the life of Sibel Ozkan. Sibel was born in Turkey in 1988, and that basic piece of background tells us a lot.

In 1988, much of Europe was in rough financial shape as communism approached its collapse. I don’t know if it’s entirely accurate to call it a “poor country” back in those days, but history clearly tells us that life in Turkey wasn’t a cake walk in the 80s and 90s. In addition to this, Turkey is a predominately Muslim country. Over 90 percent of its citizens name Islam as their religion. I’m not going to pretend to know extensive details about the daily life of a Muslim, but I know I’m on safe ground by describing it as a male-dominated culture. This isn’t a big secret or anything. Islamic women have traditionally been kept in a lower position than men.

So Sibel was born into an economically challenged country where women don’t have optimal status. This wasn’t an easy start for a young girl, and it didn’t get any easier when she turned three years old and her parents divorced. Anybody here ever dealt with a divorce? Pretty rough stuff for anybody to swallow, but it was just the beginning of Sibel’s hardships. She had two siblings, both brothers, and her mother decided to put them in an orphanage after the split from her husband because she couldn’t take care of them. The orphanage was boys-only, so little Sibel was sent to a girl’s orphanage that was three hours away.

In other words, we’re talking about a three year-old girl who goes through the following progression. 1) Her mom and dad divorce. 2) Her brothers get taken away. 3) She gets sent to an orphanage in another city, all alone with no family to take care of her, in a society with rocky financial times and marginal respect for females. I’ll be honest with you; this is pain and suffering I’m not familiar with. Nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life has even come close to this kind of sorrow. Can you imagine the fear, loneliness, and confusion this little girl must have lived with? Oh yeah, I forgot something. Her mother died a year later, when she was four.

Let’s go a little deeper into her life. As we already mentioned, Sibel is a grown woman now and she competes at 105 lbs. bodyweight. She’s tiny. Knowing this, we can make the assumption that she was much smaller than most of the other kids when she was growing up. Do you know what usually happens to small kids? They get picked on and beaten up. Do you know what happens to kids who live in orphanages? They get picked on and beaten up. My grandfather grew up in an orphanage on the south side of Chicago during the Great Depression, and I’ve heard all the stories. Eating nothing but rice three times a day, and having to pick the maggots out before you ate it. The vicious punishment of the nuns who ran the place. The barbaric treatment of the stronger kids towards the weaker kids. And he was a husky boy who could win fights. Sibel was a scrawny little squirt. What kind of childhood do you think she had? I’ve never met her, so I don’t know any facts besides what I found online, but I’m going to wager a guess that she probably had a more brutal upbringing than the vast majority of us. Turkey also hit a massive recession in the mid 90s, which made life in the country even bleaker.

When she was 13, she was sent to a different orphanage and got involved in sports. Want to know what her first interest was? Judo. Gee, why do you think she picked a combat sport? My guess is that she was probably a pretty experienced fighter at this point. Training in a martial art was most likely a way to hone the skills she already had from years of having to take care of herself. Eventually, she was switched to weightlifting, and the rest is history.

How this transfers to the Worlds…

Because Sibel has become one of the best weightlifters in the world, she most likely showed some skill and aptitude for it in the beginning. When athletes have massive talent, you can start to see it early. I would love to think Sibel’s first experience in weightlifting was a thrilling time when she first started to learn that she was special. After an entire childhood spent in the kind of grim circumstances she had to live through, weightlifting was probably one of her first rays of hope. When you’re a kid and coaches start to tell you that you’ve got potential, it’s an amazing feeling. I can remember it myself. Imagine what the praise and encouragement must have felt like to a Turkish orphan girl who grew up with so many things missing from her life.

Let me start to explain where I’m going with this, and how it applies to your life as a coach or athlete. Sibel Ozkan comes from the gutter. Please understand I’m not saying that to insult or disrespect her, or the country of Turkey, or anybody else. I’m saying it as an honest assessment of what life has to feel like when you’re an orphan in a struggling country. This kid had no parents, no real home, and no idea if her future was ever going to get better. Then, she found out she had an opportunity because weightlifting is a sport that can provide a better future in Europe. There’s money in it. She had talent in this sport, which made something very clear to her…weightlifting was her big chance.

Knowing all of these things, it starts to make sense when we watch her erupt in emotion after she makes big lifts at the World Championship. When this girl enters a weightlifting meet, she looks at it like she’s fighting for her life. It’s not just a sport, and those aren’t just shiny medals she’s competing for. Money is on the line, obviously, and money is a pretty big deal to anybody who grew up in an orphanage. When she wins international competitions, she gets paid for it. However, I think it goes deeper than that.

Weightlifting means more to you when it’s one of the main sources of your self-esteem. Some people come from backgrounds with a lot of defeat and unhappiness. When they live in these backgrounds for a long time, feelings of self-doubt and insecurity can sink into their bone marrow. If these same people discover a skill that sets them apart and provides them with success, that skill becomes the lifeline to their entire concept of pride and confidence. Once this kind of situation is established, these people are going to demonstrate fiendish work ethic and competitive intensity. They don’t walk into a competition saying to themselves, “If I fail at this, my life is still going to work out just fine.” They walk into competitions with a sense of desperation. They DON’T think their life is going to work out just fine if they fail, so they’re going to pour fantastic amounts of courage, sacrifice, and passion into their performances. If you combine this mentality with a lot of physical talent, you’ve probably got a champion in the making.

To me, Sibel Ozkan’s personal history tells the story of her emotional performance at the 2014 Worlds. I don’t know her, so I can’t be sure if I’m hitting the mark with this. It would be funny if she read this article and said, “None of that stuff is true. I was just in an emotional mood that day.” However, I don’t think that’s the case. I think the struggles of her life are in her heart and mind every time she straps on her belt and goes into battle with the barbell, and I love her for it. I’ve gone back and watched her lifting at the Worlds several times because her triumph from that meet runs pretty deep, and it strengthens my own heart to see that little sucker tearing it up.

So…you

The bottom line of this isn’t a big mystery. We’re looking at Sibel Ozkan in this article, but we’re also looking at ourselves. We’ve all got some “tale of woe” in our life story, right? I don’t know what yours is, or how bad it’s been. Some of you might have very little ability to relate to Sibel’s story because your life has been pretty easy and comfortable. Others might have a different spin on things because they’ve suffered in their lives, but it was all self-inflicted. Sibel’s troubles were forced on her. Yours might have been your own doing, the results of bad decisions and self-destructive habits.

Regardless, I think we can walk away from this article with the knowledge that our background is a part of our lifting and coaching careers. If you’ve had a tough life, you should be grateful for it. The hotter the fire, the stronger the iron…that kind of thing. As coaches, it behooves us to know something about the people we’re coaching. If you’ve got athletes with Sibel Ozkan’s type of background, make sure you understand that you’ll probably get fantastic work ethic and loyalty from them if you provide the right kind of guidance and support. This could be the beginning of a champion if they’ve got physical talent. And even if the championships don’t happen, you’re still going to have a tremendous experience coaching these people because of the gratitude and joy they’ll give to you.

We all have different things in our hearts. We have loves, hates, pains, joys, grudges, sympathies, soft spots, and hard spots. When we coach and compete, we apply these things like we’re spreading paint on a blank white canvas. We might not even realize it, just like Sibel might not have been consciously thinking about the loss of her parents or her orphanage years when she drove those jerks over her head on the platform. But trust me, it’s all part of the picture, for all of us. Let’s be grateful for the things that make us better, and let’s use all of it to make others better too.