Saskatchewan Farm Girl

Focused On The 2024 Olympics

BY LEE HART

If you think carrying pails of grain to feed cattle might have little to do with career development, ask Saskatchewan farm girl Alexis Ashworth what activities might have helped her become one of the top women weightlifting competitors in the Commonwealth.

It wasn’t just feeding buckets of barley to Simmental cattle, or 10 years of playing female hockey that led Ashworth to earn a silver medal in women’s weightlifting at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England last August. But that physical conditioning certainly helped.

“I didn’t have a lot of professional coaching, but I did have natural strength,” says Ashworth. “And I have to credit doing chores on the farm and playing hockey, at least in part, for helping to develop that overall strength. “

In the coming months she will take that natural strength and talent, add in some professional coaching, participate in qualifying events and hopefully be part of the weight lifting sport on even bigger stage—the 2024 summer Olympics in Paris France.

Her plans for the Olympics were greatly encouraged by the Commonwealth Games success. She hadn’t been with the sport very long before the COVID-19 Pandemic locked down much of the world in early 2020. So in-person training and competing were somewhat limited for more than a year.

To place second in her sport at the Commonwealth Games is a great achievement but attempting to make the Olympics is a whole different ballpark.

It will involve much physical and mental training over the next year and a half. Ashworth will need to partake in several qualifying meets, where she must do very well in at least one to quality. The new qualification process has been revised since the 2020 summer Olympics.

“It seems it is becoming more and more challenging to qualify for the Olympics,” she says. “First, you must be ranked top 10 in the world in one of the five respected weight classes. However, Canada is only allowed to send three females this go around. That means, for example, if five of us qualify for the Olympic committee then it goes on to look at who is ranked higher in the world. So you actually have to be paying attention to where other females are ranked in weight classes that normally have nothing to do with yours.

“I just have to stay focused,” says Ashworth, who also wrapped up 2022 by achieving a nursing degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Regina. “Weightlifting requires physical strength but there is also a huge technical and mental component as well. It involves just thinking about every aspect of the lift, staying in the moment, and not thinking too far ahead. So for the next year and half I am devoting myself to training and giving it my best shot.”

Ashworth was born and raised on the family-owned Ashworth Farm and Ranch, a purebred Simmental cattle and grain farm at Oungre, about 45 minutes south of Weyburn.

Along with her parents, Kelly and Janice Ashworth, family members include her three siblings, brothers, Kyle and Owen, and sister Brittany. Annual crop rotation includes durum, spring wheat, winter wheat, canola, flax, peas and lentils; while they also produce pasture and hay land to serve their 300 head of purebred Simmental cows.

The 23-year-old Ashworth says she didn’t grow up with her sights set on being an Olympic athlete. It just sort of happened.

It started in Grade 12 as her sister introduced the sports-minded teenager to Cross Fit training just as a way to keep active and fit. Cross fit involves a number of physical activities, including weight lifting.

“I had played hockey for about 10 years and was looking for something to keep me in shape during the off season and my sister suggested cross fit training,” says Ashworth.

She found she had somewhat of a natural talent for the weightlifting component, and an observant coach encouraged her to attend a weight lifting meet. She attended her first weightlifting meet in the fall of 2019, did well and after participating in subsequent events it wasn’t long before she qualified for both Western Canadian Weightlifting Championship as well as the Senior National Championships.

But early in 2020 as restrictions related to the COVID19 Pandemic were imposed, the in-person aspect of many activities came to a grinding halt. There were no meets, no training facilities open, everything went virtual including her University of Saskatchewan nursing studies. Ashworth returned home, set up a gym in part of the farm shop and continued training on her own.

As COVID restrictions relaxed in 2021, sports meets resumed and she got to attend a live weight lifting competition in Kelowna, B.C.

“I had been training and still had very little experience at competing, but I did well at the Kelowna event,” says Ashworth.

She competes in the women’s 71 kg weight category. The objective is to have her own body weight as close to 71 kg as possible without going over. The competition involves three lifts in two standard weightlifting disciplines — the snatch (a one-more lift with a wide grip), and the clean and jerk (a closegripped, two part lift).

At the Kelowna event she achieved a personal best, lifting 90 kilograms in the snatch and 110 kilograms in the clean and jerk.

There were more competitions ahead, and Ashworth’s big opportunity came in February 2022 as she attended the Canadian Invitational, a sanctioned International Weightlifting Federation event in Scarborough, Ont.

At the Ontario competition, Ashworth won three gold medals and broke three Saskatchewan records by posting a 98-kilogram snatch and a 122kg clean and jerk for a total weight of 220kg in the women’s 71-kilogram division. That result gave her the current No. 1 weight class ranking in Canada and a berth in the Commonwealth Games.

With those medals under her belt, and in preparation for the Commonwealth Games, she decided to hire a professional coach and began working with Wil Fleming based in Bloomington, Indiana. Initially Ashworth and her coach connected through virtual on-line training sessions. The well-respected American coach was impressed with what he saw, according to an article in the Regina Leader Post.

“It is so unusual to hear of somebody getting that good without a coach,” Fleming told Leader Post reporter Greg Harder. “You have to be so mentally tough and strong-willed to do that. Obviously, Alexis is extremely talented. Having spoken to Canadian coaches and fellow American coaches who are aware of her, they’re drooling over her talent. They’re saying “oh my goodness, this girl could be anything. She could be an Olympic medalist. The sky is the limit.”

Prior to heading to the Commonwealth Games, Ashworth spent about a week in Indiana training with Fleming in person. She says being able to improve her technical weightlifting skills was extremely valuable at the Commonwealth Games.

At the Commonwealth Games in August, with her parents looking on, Ashworth posted an impressive performance, finishing second in the women’s 71-kilogram division with a total lift of 214kg. Sarah Davies of England was first at 229kg while India’s Harjinder Kaur (212kg) earned the bronze medal.

After the Commonwealth Games, she returned home, continued training and also completed her nursing degree at the U of S.

“For the next few months I am going to concentrate on training,” says Ashworth. “It is important to have that nursing career to come back to at some point. I will see how far I can go with the weightlifting, and while I don’t like to talk about it, there is always a risk of injury, which could sideline the sports career. The nursing career will be there.”

Ashworth says she can’t underestimate the value of growing up on a farm has played in the success of her sport and nursing careers.

She started out with the 4-H beef club at the age of 6 and remained active in 4-H through until her late teens. She was also always actively involved with farm chores as time permitted. That ranged from helping out with meal preparation to feed farm workers, working with the cattle, or being out in the field running a combine at harvest as needed.

“I believe anyone who has grown up on a farm recognizes the benefits that it plays in your life,” says Ashworth. “You certainly learn it can involve hard work, leading to a strong work ethic. You also learn how to deal with adversities, realizing that not everything turns out the way we’d like. Living with adversity is part of life. And along with that you also learn to have a positive attitude. There are a lot of things you can’t control, but if you stay focused and do your best you’ll get to where you want to go.”