David Liti is a Commonwealth Games champion again.<\/p>\n
Liti has won the +110kg class in Glasgow with a strong strategic move by his team in the clean and jerk phase.<\/p>\n
He sat second behind Lovepreet Singh, of India, after the snatch and remained in that position until his second to last lift.<\/p>\n
Liti told RNZ he enjoyed what in the end turned out to be a one-on-one battle with Singh.<\/p>\n
“To be better we need to compete against each other, we’re friends who just want to be the best they can be. Today I have the gold and maybe next time he would.”<\/p>\n
Liti said he got pumped up by the noisy crowd.<\/p>\n
“It’s the best feeling, the crowd was crazy, such a good crowd. I didn’t think any crowd could match Gold Coast it helped a lot with the confidence and the adrenaline to get up on the platform.<\/p>\n
“I think we had more Kiwis than Scots there today, so very very proud.”<\/p>\n
Liti achieved 220kg with his first clean and jerk lift to put the pressure on Singh who had a 10kg lead after the snatch.<\/p>\n
The Kiwi then decided to nominate 223kg for his second lift meaning the Indian had to make 217kg to match him, but he failed.<\/p>\n
Liti then successfully lifted 223kg on his first attempt to win gold.<\/p>\n
The Aucklander finished with a games record combined weight of 389kg.<\/p>\n
He admitted afterwards that he wasn’t happy with his snatch but felt he could overcome his opponent in the clean and jerk.<\/p>\n
Liti and coach Tina Ball embraced in front of the crowd and New Zealand supporters afterwards.<\/p>\n
Ball is the only coach Liti has ever had.<\/p>\n
“I thank her for everything I do, I’m very proud of her for looking after me and my emotions,” Liti said.<\/p>\n
The 30 year old won gold at the 2018 games and then silver four years ago.<\/p>\n
Tu\u02bfi-Alofa Patolo finished fourth in the women’s +86kg class.<\/p>\n
Fiji won their first gold medal with Taniela Rainibogi winning the 110kg class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Liti is a Commonwealth Games champion again. Liti has won the +110kg class in Glasgow with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-553512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}