Pan American Weightlifting Federation 2021 Hall of Fame Ceremony to be held on November 14

The 2021 Pan American Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held on Sunday, November 14 online.

The president of the PFLP, José Quiñones González, informed that the virtual Gala in its second edition will start from 4.00 pm (Lima time) and will be broadcasted through Zoom, YouTube and Facebook Live.

Two legendary Trinidad and Tobago sports figures, weightlifters Rodney Adolphus Wilkes and Lennox Kilgour, were the athletes honored posthumously on this occasion.

Representatives from Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Colombia were honored in the categories of Athletes, Leader, International Technical Official and Coach.

According to information from the FPLP Hall of Fame Commission, these personalities were nominated “after the nomination process, confirmation of achievements and internal voting”.

Andrés Vargas of Puerto Rico was selected as Leader; Iván Román of Cuba and Doris Marrero of Venezuela as Official; and Luis Carlos Arrieta and Jaiber Manjarrez of Colombia as Coach.

Rodney A. Wilkes (1925 - 2014) (TTO), won two Olympic medals in two different Games. He was the first athlete from Trinidad and Tobago to win an Olympic medal when he won the silver medal at the London 1948 Olympic Games in the featherweight division won by the Egyptian Mahmoud Fayad with an Olympic and world record. In the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, he was bronze medal behind the Soviet Rafael Chimishkyany Nikolai Saksonov. In the 1956 Melbourne Games he was fourth.

In 1951 Wilkes won the gold medal at the first Pan American Games in Buenos Aires. In 1946 he became internationally known with his first place in the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, Colombia. He also won gold at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games.

Lennox Kilgour (1927- 2004) (TTO), won the bronze medal in the medium heavyweight category at the 1952 Olympic Games, was silver medalist at the 1951 Pan American Games and at the 1954 Commonwealth Games.

Andrés Vargas (PUR), has been the president of the Puerto Rican Weightlifting Federation since 1996 and has also held international positions as President of the PFLP and member of the EC of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF). His legacy includes the creation of the Criollo Weightlifting Tournament, now in its 36th edition, and the founding of the first weightlifting cooperative. Under his presidency, the Olympic presence of Puerto Rican weightlifters was boosted. Vargas is a symbol of weightlifting in Puerto Rico.

Doris Zoraida Marrero (VEN), is an experienced referee, pedagogue and graduate in Physical Education and Sports Techniques and has had a recognized performance in the international arena in several Central American and Caribbean Games, Bolivarian Games, South American Games, Pan American Games, world tournaments and in the Olympic Games of Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

Iván Román (CUB), has a long and fruitful career as a coach, professor and researcher in the field of sports. In 1983 he obtained the scientific degree of Doctor in Pedagogical Sciences with his thesis Methodology of training in the competitive period for weightlifters with high mastery. Category One International Referee. He is the only Cuban official designated by the IWF as referee in three Olympic Games: 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000. He has been an official and referee in more than 60 international tournaments and multidisciplinary games.

Luis Carlos Arrieta (COL), as a coach, has played a relevant role in Colombia’s international successes in recent years. His pupils have won multiple medals in the World Championships as in the 2019 version. Also noteworthy are the medals won at the Pan American Games in Lima 2019, at the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 and the one recently won at the Olympic tournament in Tokyo.

Jaiber Manjarrez (COL), biologist-coach, has been an equally successful coach with contributions to training for both high performance and early ages. His experience in the training process has resulted in the benefit of several generations of Colombian Olympic weightlifters such as Oscar Figueroa, Diego Salazar and Javier Mosquera among the most recent figures.

The FPLP Hall of Fame was inaugurated in 2020 as one of the initiatives implemented by the Pan American Weightlifting Federation as a project of encouragement and recognition in the midst of the negative effects of the terrible global pandemic.

The continental weightlifting family has welcomed this idea and is confident of the growing support of all national federations in the region.

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