#world championships

Lara Lima is an amazing 18 year old paralympic weightlifter from Uberlândia, a city in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.

Lara has been a wheelchair user for all her life as she was born with both spina bifida myelomeningocele and arthrogryposis. Myelomeningocele is a condition in which there grows a malformation in the spine during pregnancy. This consequentially causes damage to various parts of the spinal column, including the spinal cord. As Lara’s spinal cord was completely severed, she never had any feeling in her legs and has been completely paralyzed from her waist down her entire life. Besides that, her legs couldn’t move around freely during her time in the womb. This resulted in arthrogryposis, meaning that most of the joints in Lara’s legs have stood in a completely fixed and often bent position for all her life.

Lara always had a very active and athletic character. During her time in primary school she started trying out different sports to find out what suited her best. She especially liked swimming and wheelchair dancing and decided to join a dance group and an athletic club to bring her game to a higher level.

As a child, Lara loved to walk on her hands or move around the house using only the strength of her arms. She also didn’t shy away from climbing the stairs at her friends’ houses and was even surprisingly good at it.

Things like these didn’t go unnoticed by the people around her and at the age of 10, a friend suggested her that she should try out the sport of powerlifting. While she really liked swimming and dancing, she immediately knew that powerlifting would become her ultimate passion!

At CDDU, the athletic club where she joined the powerlifting team, Lara still holds the record of youngest weightlifter to compete in an official tournament!

Lara made her international debut in 2017 and now competes in tournaments all over the world. In 2019, she won a silver medal at the junior competition of the World Championships in Dubai, UAE. In May this year, she booked her biggest success as of now by winning gold in the junior competition and bronze in the adult competition of the World Championships in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Lara will also represent her country at the 2020 Paralympic Games which will start in just a few days!

Feel free to check out Lara’s Instagram page if you’d like to see more of her athletic endeavours!

Lara Lima‍♀️♥️ (@laralimahalter) • Instagram photos and videos

Melaica Tuinfort is a 31 year old paralympic weightlifter who was born in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname.

Melaica’s legs are very short and severely malformed due to a Congenital Longitudinal Central Reduction Defect. Because of this, she never had any muscle function below her knees and has been a wheelchair user her entire life.

When she was 15 years old, Melaica’s parents decided to move to The Netherlands with Melaica, her brother and her sister.

Melaica always had a great passion for athletics and she was particularly gifted in the sport of powerlifting. She often amazed people when they saw her lifting unbelievable amounts of weight and at a young age Melaica already knew that she wanted to make her sport out of this.

Melaica made her international debut in 2009 but it took some time for her to achieve the success she wanted. In 2014, Melaica won a bronze medal at the World Championships in Dubai. Her greatest achievement though was winning a bronze medal at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016!

Unfortunately, Melaica hasn’t been selected for the Paralympic Games in Tokyo this year. She isn’t giving up on her paralympic dream though and now put herself to training for the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, France.

Melaica recently graduated in Tax Law and Economics at the University of Rotterdam and has had a part-time job at Wittepoel for years now. This is the specialized orthopaedic shoe company that designed the shoes Melaica wears during most competitions. In one of her blog posts, Melaica wrote that in the past several companies tried to design shoes for her. None of these ever really succeeded at this though because of the special shape of her feet. Wittepoel was the first to manage in designing comfortable and good looking shoes for Melaica and she is very happy with Wittepoel as employer and sponsor!

Besides her busy schedule, Melaica regularly visits Suriname and loves shopping, dining or going out with her friends.

If you’d like to know more about Melaica, you can visit her website. Also, feel free to follow her on InstagramorFacebook!

Melaica Tuinfort - Home

Melaica Tuinfort (@melaicatuinfort) • Instagram photos and videos

FIVB World Championships, Hamburg, Germany. 6/30/2019