Peru will host the Pan-American Weightlifting Championship,
which will offer places for the 2008 Olympic Games, the president
of the Peruvian Weightlifting Federation told Xinhua on
Thursday.
The president, Jose Quinones, said the competition will run from
March 18 to 23 of 2008 and that 200 competitors have already signed
up. The event will take place in the Miguel Grau stadium, home to
Peruvian soccer team Sport Body, in Callao city, 14km from the
nation's capital, Lima.
The competition's top five men and top four women, as measured
by points, will win a place in the 2008 Games, to be held in
Chinese capital Beijing.
Weightlifting was an Olympic sport in the first Games in 1896 in
Athens, but was off the lists from 1908 until 1920, when the Games
was held in Belgian city Antwerp.
(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2007)