Amanda Hubbard wins 3 gold medals at US Weighlifting Championships

Amanda Hubbard wins 3 golds in weightlifting

CHICAGO — Amanda Hubbard won three gold medals Thursday on the second day of the 2009 U.S. National Weightlifting Championships.

Hubbard of Cumming, Ga., missed her first attempt on both the snatch and clean and jerk events in the 128-pound class, but succeeded in each of her next two tries.

Her lifts of 191 pounds in the snatch and 233 pounds in the clean and jerk were both good for gold, giving her a score of 193 overall.

She beat out silver medalist Hilary Katzenmeier (183 overall) and Stephanie Spencer (143), who took bronze.

Hubbard said she knew exactly what mistakes she had made on her first lifts of the day.

“Yeah, after it was too late to fix it,” Hubbard said with a laugh. “I was actually nervous leading up to those. In the snatch I caught the first one out in front, and the first clean I caught back on my heels. I was able to adjust and come back and everything was OK.”

The three Americans have been in competition with each other before, and they embraced on top of the winners stand at the University of Illinois-Chicago Forum.

The competition was a bit fiercer in the Pan American Championships — being held simultaneously — at the same weight class.

Geralee Vega Morales of Puerto Rico lifted 251 pounds in the clean and jerk to move into first place overall, but Ecuadorian Maria Escobar Guerrero lifted 253 in her final attempt to take the gold.

Both women finished with a final score of 203, but Escobar Guerrero weighed in at about a pound lighter and was therefore declared the winner.

“All you have to do is have it in your mind to do it and be confident in yourself,” Escobar Guerrero said through a translator. “I’m very excited, very proud to represent my whole country because its a big honor for one person to do that.”