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Washington Post Company Apr 22, 2000

She does not want to be perceived as a novelty, greeted with grins and
stupid questions. She is large. She is a weightlifter. And she is, thank you
very much, an Olympic medal hopeful. Cheryl Haworth, a high school junior,
stands 5 feet 9 and weighs 300 pounds. She owns every record in every
category of American women's, junior and school- age weightlifting in the
super heavyweight class.

She just turned 17 last week.

At the March national championships here, she easily topped the women's
field and, for good measure, outlifted every male her age. She is so strong,
U.S. women's national team coach Michael Cohen said, some high school
football coaches avoid her training sessions at the state-of-the-art
weightlifting complex in Savannah, Ga., so as not to demoralize their
players.

The prize money she earned last year from breaking and re- breaking records
topped the income of her father, a communications consultant for Motorola.
She has appeared on "The Tonight Show," "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee" and
"The Today Show," and has been photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

In the first year women's weightlifting appears on the Olympic program, and
only her fourth of competition, Haworth is expected to contend for at least
a bronze medal and possibly the gold.

Early Signs of Talent

"The first day I saw her, I said she was going to revolutionize the sport
completely," said Cohen, a member of the U.S. Olympic team that boycotted
the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. "In 1998, I gave a speech to the U.S. board
of weightlifting and said, 'You're not going to believe the things you're
going to see.' But the things I told the board then, she's gone by all that.
And she won't reach her peak until she's 30 years old."

Four years ago, Cheryl Haworth's father, Robert, took her to the Paul
Anderson/Howard Cohen Weightlifting Center in Savannah, intending for her to
begin strength training to prepare for the softball season. Robert Haworth
introduced his daughter to Cohen, jokingly calling her "the strongest girl
in the world." Cohen just smiled and thought nothing of it. He sent Cheryl
Haworth into the training room to lift a barbell or two for his wife, also a
weightlifting coach.

Shortly after the pair disappeared to work out, his wife's voice rang out.

"Michael, you've got to see this girl," Sheryl Cohen shouted from the weight
room. "This is the strongest girl I've ever seen."

That day, Cheryl Haworth, then an eighth-grader, lifted approximately 120
pounds with no preparation, no training and, seemingly, no effort.

"She threw it up like it was a loaf of bread," her father recalled.

So began Haworth's weightlifting career. She attacked the sport with
uncommon determination, telling her parents she wanted to be the best in the
world. She attends Savannah Arts Academy during the day and trains for three
hours after school.

Even four years after her debut, she continues to make observers exclaim. In
Frederick, she snatched an American record 264.6 pounds and lifted a record
319.7 pounds in the clean and jerk. She runs the 40-yard dash in five
seconds flat, an excellent time for an NFL lineman. She has a 32-inch
vertical leap, which would satisfy a college basketball coach. Her
flexibility is equally impressive: She can do a split both with her legs
splayed to the front and back as well as sideways.

"She possesses tremendous technique, speed, flexibility, desire and
determination," Cohen said. "And, last but not least, is strength."

Almost as soon as she began entering weightlifting competitions, she began
setting records. But it was not until last November, at the world
championships in Athens, that Haworth moved into the elite ranks of women's
weightlifting. There, she tied for a bronze medal finish by lifting a total
of 556.8 pounds in the snatch and clean and jerk. That total was about 70
pounds behind China's Meiyuan Ding, 21, the world record holder, and 60
pounds behind Poland's Agata Wrobel, who was born in 1981. (It is also
nearly 30 pounds behind Haworth's winning total in Frederick.)

In a society in which rail-thin women are plastered on billboards and
magazine covers, and most teenage girls cringe at exceeding their male peers
in height, let alone weight, Haworth is an anomaly. She does not hesitate
when asked to reveal her weight or any other physical dimension. There is no
blushing or agonizing. If Haworth's achievements belie her age, so too does
her demeanor. She carries herself like a woman twice as old. She speaks
articulately, thoughtfully. She seems proud of her size and strength.

And why not? She could afford to buy herself a car--a Chevy Blazer- -before
she was old enough to drive it.

"The media and everyone is so focused on how strange it is, not how good it
is," Haworth said. "Everyone gets so caught up in, 'But you're a woman?
You're a weightlifter?' It shouldn't matter much."

Haworth and Savannah's Stephanie Bodie, who competes in the 139- pound
class, trained together in a well-padded hotel ballroom before the national
championships. During the session, which involved repetitions with a single
barbell, there was a major shuffling of weights with each exchange.
Haworth's training lifts seemed to barely tire her. And they far exceeded
even Bodie's personal bests.

No one else in Haworth's immediate family shares her exceptional size.
Formerly a varsity wrestler at the University of Nebraska, her father stands
about 5-11 and weighs 225 pounds. Her mother, Sheila, a nurse, is 5-7, 165
pounds. Cheryl Haworth's sisters are 5-8, 130 pounds (Beth, 19) and 5-10,
160 pounds (Katie, 14).

Though a relatively large baby at birth (8 pounds 13 ounces), Cheryl Haworth
turned into a tiny toddler. She was a sickly, skinny girl who disdained
eating. Her parents, toting her frequently to the doctor or emergency room,
worried constantly about her health. She had allergies, ear infections,
bronchitis and several bouts of pneumonia. It was not until she was about 5
years old, when her tonsils and adenoids were removed, that her problems
ceased.

After that, she developed an interest in eating and grew rapidly through her
early teens, gaining as much as 10 pounds a month. Sheila Haworth worried
about her daughter's increasing size. As a nurse, she knew something about
nutrition and served balanced, low-fat meals. When advised by a dietitian to
place her daughter on a drastic diet, Sheila recoiled. She did not want the
dinner table to become a battleground.

"I decided that I'm not going to make her feel bad about her weight," Sheila
Haworth said. "That's the way God put her together, and I'm happy with it."

Growing up in a rural area on the outskirts of Savannah, Cheryl Haworth
spent hours outdoors. She and a young male friend loved to build tree
houses. It was always Cheryl Haworth, not the boy, who lugged around the
heavy lumber, her father recalled. As a softball player on a city team in
sixth grade, her teammates nicknamed her "Arms" because she could heave the
ball from the outfield to home plate without a bounce. The nickname applied
to more than throwing balls.

As a seventh grader, she beat all of the boys--even those in high school--
who challenged her to arm-wrestling competitions on the bus to school.

The trend has continued.

Said Cohen, just before the national championships: "We don't have a
16-year-old guy who is that strong in the United States."

Indeed, in the boys' school-age division (16 and under) at the national
championships, 193-pound Jonathan Levine registered the best lift of all of
the entrants. He lifted a total of 463.05 pounds-- more than 120 pounds
fewer than Haworth, then 16, lifted at the same meet.

Rising Medal Contender

Though the Olympic trials do not take place until this summer, Haworth has a
guaranteed spot on the team, Cohen said. Four women will represent the
United States in Sydney, and the three others will have to earn their
places.

At a recent Olympic test event in Sydney, Haworth topped the field. Among
Haworth's competitors was the 30-year-old Nigerian with whom she was tied
for third at the world championships last year. With each victory, Haworth's
confidence grows. She first realized she could contend for an Olympic medal
after winning the bronze in Athens.

"That," she said, "set me up to be able to get a medal in the Olympics. Now
that I won a medal, I know it's not impossible. I think if we play our cards
right, we should be able to get something."

U.S. Weightlifting

Olympic Trials

When: July 22

Where: New Orleans

At stake: Three Olympic team spots for women and two for men. (The United
States can send two men and four women to Sydney, including Cheryl Haworth,
who already has been awarded a spot on the team.)

Heavy Lifting

Olympic weightlifting consists of two lifts, and each athlete gets three
chances at each lift. The best snatch score plus the best clean and jerk
score is the lifter's total.

Snatch

This lift is one continuous movement in which the bar is brought from the
floor to overhead.

How to do it: With shoulders over the bar and back arched, the lifter grabs
the bar, pulling upward while trying to push her feet through the floor.

When the bar passes her knees, she raises her shoulders, keeping the bar
close to her legs. When the bar is almost to her waist, she extends her
body, shrugs her shoulders, pulls her body under the bar.

With the bar over her head, she locks her elbows and stands up.

Clean and Jerk

This lift has two parts -- floor to shoulders, then shoulders to overhead.
The weight lifted is usually heavier than in the snatch.

How to do it: The lifter begins in roughly the same position but with hands
closer together. She again begins to pull by trying to push her feet through
the floor.

As the bar reaches her knees, she raises the shoulders while keeping the bar
close to her thighs. She extends her body and shrugs.

She again pulls her body under the bar, but this time she rotates the elbows
around the bar and catches it on her shoulders as she moves into a squat.

She stands and adjusts her grip if necessary.

Next, the lifter bends her knees and ankles slightly, then drives as
explosively as she can upward with her legs, propelling the bar up off her
shoulders. She will put one foot forward, flat on the floor, with the bar
straight overhead at arms length.

She then pushes up with her knees and brings the rear foot forward. The lift
is complete when the bar is under control and the feet are parallel beneath
it.

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