Women weightlifters go easy on the grunt

The female weightlifters are a no-nonsense bunch. The ones I have seen largely eschew the grunting, yelling, and motivating howling beloved by the men.

Instead, they march out, take a deep breath, and either do or don't lift the weight. Succeed or not they turn and stride off again.

I caught the last moments of the women's 63 kg class, popped in between Glen Snyders' swimming heat, and our women's soccer team conceding a goal approximately sixty seconds into their match with the United States.

Some of the competitors fitted the stereotype. Imagine a human frame stuffed with bowling balls, with the height and width more or less the same.

What no one expects is a weightlifter to come out looking like a slightly more athletic version of a Vogue model. But, in a moment showing the glory of sport, in anyone being entitled to compete in whatever they like regardless of size or shape, that's what we got.

Khazakstan's Irina Nekrassova stood a graceful thirty centimetres taller than North Korean Pak Hyon Suk, her main competition. She was also the favourite to win.

She didn't. The stocky North Korean with the expressive eyes and the anxious mouth lifted 135 kg, double her bodyweight plus ten kilograms.

Try that in the garden. Achieve it or spend the next year in a back brace.

Once the buzzer sounded and she was allowed to drop the weight there was only a quiet dignified satisfaction at her achievement. Pak Hyon Suk was gone so quickly the cameras were left stranded.

The lens needed something. It would not matter whether it was joy or despair. Any strong emotion would feed it.

It found Irina sitting alone and sobbing, her face in her hands. She looked up. We saw tears cutting down her face. The camera stayed with her, its interest becoming a cruel invasion of privacy. Caught in the moment's intensity I could not look away.

Realising I'd been hooked into dwelling in her distress wasn't a great feeling.