Olympic weightlifting hero welcomed back to Whitehorse

A heroes welcome greeted Yukon Olympian Jeanne Lassen as she entered the Whitehorse International Airport on Tuesday.

A heroes welcome greeted Yukon Olympian Jeanne Lassen as she entered the Whitehorse International Airport on Tuesday.

This was the first time the 27-year-old weightlifter has been in Whitehorse since she left for the Beijing Games on July 28.

“It’s awesome, it’s a big surprise,“ Lassen said about the enthusiastic greeting. “I am so happy to be home.“

The list of weightlifting achievements for Lassen, who competes in the 75-kg category,  include becoming the first Canadian women in 17 years to win a medal at the 2006 World Championships.

She ended up with two in total at the competition, winning a silver and a bronze medal.

Also in 2006, Lassen won the Commonwealth Games champion honours, recording a Games record in the clean and jerk.

She is also a three-time silver medalist at the Junior World Championships and 15-time medalist at University World Championships.

Lassen holds six Canadian senior records as well as three junior records and she was named as Yukon Female Athlete of the Year an incredible eight times.

In 2000, Lassen secured a spot on the Canadian Olympic team as an alternate.

After already qualifying for the 2008 Olympics, she chose to participate at a competition in Kelowna, B.C. in order to help secure an additional spot for the Canadian women’s weightlifting team in Beijing.

Lassen had to turndown competing at the 2007 Pan Am Games in Brazil to attend the Kelowna competition.

Lassen competed on Day Seven of the Beijing Games.

After missing her first attempt in the snatch,which was for 105-kg, Lassen regrouped and made it on her second try.

However, Lassen was unable to lift her third and final in total in the snatch, which was set at 110-kg.

The clean and jerk category went a lot better for Lassen than the snatch.

She was successful in her first two attempts, which included a 130-kg and 135-kg lift. Lassen missed her final lift that was set at 140-kg.

Lassen’s overall combined score for her six lift attempts was 240-kg, which was just nine shy of her personal best. She finished in the eighth place.

The gold medal winner in the 75-kg category was Chinese Weightlifter Cao Lei, who broke three Olympic records en route to her first place finish.

Second place went to Kazakhstan’s Alla Vazhenina, who lifted a total of 266-kg and Russian Nadezda Evstyukhina finished in third with a lift total of 264-kg.

The Yukon’s other Olympian was track cyclist Zach Bell, who finished in an impressive seventh in the points race and then went on to a 12th place showing in the madison event with teammate Martin Gilbert.

Bell plans on arriving back in the Yukon sometime in late September.

Lassen was all smiles walking into the Whitehorse airport’s terminal.

A sizable crowd of friends, family, fellow athletes and general supporters cheered enthusiastically upon seeing Yukon’s only weightlifting Olympian.

She was accompanied by her mother, Moira, who is a renowned weightlifting official.

Moira was the only Canadian as well as female weightlifting official at the Beijing Games.

Flowers, homemade signs and balloons were presented to Lassen, who was barely through the door before being hugged and congratulated.

Lassen said that she was happy with how she did at the Olympics.

“I wanted to do more than that, but it is what it is and in the end I think the competition was really stiff,“ she said.

“I think 20 years from now it’s not going to matter if I came eighth or fourth, it’s really getting on the podium that makes all of the difference. We all want to do our personal best there, but I tied my best qualifying total for the Olympics, so that’s still really good. I just had planned to do a lot more.“

She said she didn’t do anything differently because it was the Olympics.

“I didn’t do anything differently, except this is the only time that I have competed only for that competition,“ Lassen said.

“Everything else I have done has been a qualifier, or a test or something else for the Olympics. This time it was really ‘I am only doing this lift for today and nothing else.‘ It was kind of a weird feeling, but I don’t know that it was negative or positive, it was just different.“

Lassen, who was given the nickname ‘Whitehorse’ by the Canadian men’s softball team, said her highlights included celebrating with roommate Carol Huynh, who won Canada’s first medal in the 48-kg freestyle wrestling event on Day Eight. Huynh took gold, beating Japan’s Icho Chiharu 4-0 and 2-1.

Another highlight of Lassen’s included watching Watson Lake’s Zach Bell compete in the points race on Day Eight of the Olympics, as well as having her picture taken with 75-kg gold medal weightlifter Lei and CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes Shaun Majumder.

One of her more obvious highlights was the competition itself. Lassen said the support she received from the Yukon helped with her performance.

“I am just really lucky to have had the support from the Yukon community,“ Lassen said.

“When I missed lifts at the Gold Rush Inn (for July’s Northwestel test event) people where cheering so much. That’s what I thought of when I missed 105-kg. Like ‘It doesn’t matter, people only want me to succeed, they are not going to judge me if I fail,‘ so that’s how I tried to see it the whole time.“

Lassen said she plans to stay involved with weighting and hopes to attend the 2012 Games in London.

Trevor Twardochleb, executive director at Sport Yukon, attended the welcome back celebration for Lassen.

Twardochleb said it was important to him and his family to attend the welcome back gathering.

“The whole community has watched her grow as an athlete from a very young age and we are all extremely proud of her and all of her accomplishments,“ he said.

“My family was so excited to go and see her at the airport. They made signs for her and they think she is a rock star because she was on T.V. It’s just amazing to watch somebody grow into such a wonderful person and I think it was awesome to see such great support there tonight.“

He said both Lassen and Bell are true ambassadors for the Yukon.

“It’s just terrific to see the accomplishments of both Zach and Jeane,“ Twardochleb said. “It’s hard to imagine the support that one would get if they aren’t seen in a good light and that’s why it’s so easy to support these two, because they are terrific people and true ambassadors.“