Thammy Nguyen’s toddlers are too young yet to understand their mother’s sport but they’ve got a pretty good gist of it
“‘Up Down’, that’s what they call it,” she explains, laughing. “They don’t know what weightlifting is. They just say ‘Mam is going Up Down now!’”
Her eldest is only four so also didn’t get the historical significance of her winning Ireland’s first senior medal (bronze in the 49kg division) at the recent European Weightlifting Championships in Armenia but she’s already demonstrating her mother’s uber-competitive streak.
On examining the medal, four-year-old Lilly pronounced: “Mammy, you got number three! You’re not the winner!’
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Not speaking English, and being Asian, always made me the odd one out in the class. It made it very hard to make friends at the start
— Thammy Nguyen
Nguygen is a 4ft 10in powerhouse who lifts twice her own body weight and, under the Sinclair score (a ranking system based on a coefficient of body weight multiplied by weight lifted), is Weightlifting Ireland’s top-ranked female.
Her family emigrated from Vietnam when she was six, spent two years in Belturbet (Cavan) before settling in Clare Hall in North Dublin, where their parents run a take-away restaurant in which their children regularly pitch in.
Nhat (22), her only sibling, is Ireland’s number one men’s badminton player. Hard work and fierce ambition is in their DNA.
Thammy (26) recalls their early economic and social struggles. “Not speaking English, and being Asian, always made me the odd one out in the class. It made it very hard to make friends at the start. My dad told me that he was once earning €160 a week and the rent was €140. How did we get through that? I can’t imagine but if you think I have a good work ethic, you should see my parents. They work seven days a week, non-stop. My Mam, honestly, puts me to shame.”
She’s hardly a slacker herself, already running three businesses of her own.
She started her Thammy Lash brand as a teenager, specifically to fund her sport. Now she has two eyelash salons (in DCU and Artane) and runs a CrossFit gym in Baldoyle with her husband Mark Gough.
Throw in parenting Lilly and baby Marc (two) with 25 hours of training a week and that’s a lot of heavy lifting inside and outside the gym but great family support and employees help keep all the plates spinning.
She discovered her sport through social media, in her Leaving Cert year.
“I seen this girl on Instagram who looked absolutely jacked [muscled]. Everyone has their own opinion about body shape but I love that six-pack, muscled physique. So I messaged her and went to CrossFit through her. CrossFit has elements of Olympic weightlifting in it so it just went from there.”
In her first competition, her 35kg snatch and 65kg clean and jerk qualified her for European Juniors and she competed for Ireland up to 2016 before her priorities shifted to family and business but her brother’s qualification for the Toyko Olympics relit the fire.
“I’d competed in European Juniors and World Championships and one of my goals back then was to compete in the Tokyo Olympics with Nhat. When he walked out in the opening ceremony it just really hit me. I was sitting at home with my six-month-old in my arms and a lump in my throat. I’m a very goal-driven person and if I don’t achieve one it just haunts me.
“The Olympics was the only goal that I hadn’t achieved so I said to my husband, ‘right, I think I want to go back and qualify for the Olympics’. From that day on I was focused, full on again.”
I just love the adrenaline of lifting weight and feeling strong and being able to push yourself when you go for a ‘maximum’. You’re pushing your body and your mind to your limits
— Thammy Nguyen
She sourced a world-class coach — Malaysian Faizal Baharom — and also credits a €3,000 grant from the Olympic Federation of Ireland’s Make a Difference fund for her recent breakthrough. It funded a pre-Europeans three-week training camp in Budapest, her first time in such a high-performance team set-up.
Olympic weightlifting consists of two lifts — the snatch and the clean and jerk — and scores are a combination of your best lift in each.
Nguyen lifted a 75kg PB [personal best] in snatch and 98kg in the clean and jerk (her PB is 101) at Europeans. The latter won bronze in that lift and her total of 173 was fifth overall in her class.
“I just love the adrenaline of lifting weight and feeling strong and being able to push yourself when you go for a ‘maximum’. You’re pushing your body and your mind to your limits,” she says.
“I’m not good at anything aerobic. If someone asked me to run 1km I’d die but ask me to squat 120 kilos and I’ll do it in a heartbeat. I’m fast and aggressive with type-two muscles. That’s just how I’m built.”
The proliferation of CrossFit, a fitness sport only invented in 2000, has undoubtedly contributed to the noughties’ weightlifting boom, especially among women. Throw a dumbbell at any industrial estate in the country and you’ll hit a hard-core lifting gym.
It’s a sport scarred by drug scandals but Weightlifting Ireland is the all-island body that governs Olympic lifting and is recognised by Sport Ireland, thereby supporting and adhering to its strict anti-doping protocols.
Weightlifting Ireland’s current membership is 43 per cent female and 57 per cent male and it is hosting the European Masters Championships in Waterford’s Setu Arena next month (May 12th-20th), featuring 700 men and women ranging in age from 35 to 80-plus.
“It’s one of the most versatile sports there is,” says Weightlifting Ireland‘s women in sport officer Claire McClarnon. “There are weight classes from 49 kilos up to 87+ so age, gender, body type doesn’t matter, it’s really inclusive.”
Yet it was 2014 before Weightlifting Ireland fielded its first senior female athletes and 2015 before Irish women competed in World Championships.
Nguyen was on that team. She admits that her return to competition, after giving birth, wasn’t easy and is particularly candid about one side effect.
“On my first child, my pelvic floor stretched. I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t do the pelvic exercises like I was told so when I skip or do big box jumps or really heavy-load squats I often can’t stop myself peeing. This is a very weird subject to be talking about but other women will relate to it,” she says.
“I was doing a heavy lift one day in competition and everyone was laughing because I peed myself and it was recorded on camera. I decided that wasn’t going to happen again so when I go to competitions now I wear a nappy. It sounds strange but I don’t care. I don’t want to be embarrassed again and I guarantee you there are other women out there who do the same.”
Lifting weights was kind of frowned upon for women before but women are very powerful and, if you have kids, you have this massive willpower. I think you push yourself even more
— Thammy Nguyen
Recovering full fitness and her preferred body shape after gaining 20kg on each pregnancy tested her physically and mentally yet childbirth strengthened her determination also.
“Anyone who’s gone through a birth, especially a natural birth, will tell you there’s nothing more excruciating than labour pain. My second baby was an emergency C-section but I had Covid, so no one else was allowed in and I had to go through it all on my own. If you can go through that you can do anything.
“Lifting weights was kind of frowned upon for women before but women are very powerful and, if you have kids, you have this massive willpower. I think you push yourself even more.”
Her next big competition is World Championships in Riyadh on September 2nd-17th and she’s equally candid about what a jump that involves but this irresistible force now has two new goals — to compete with her brother at the Paris 2024 Olympics and motivate other women.
“I’d love to inspire young girls that it’s absolutely normal and great for you to go to a gym and squat, and maybe even squat more than men. I’ve grown up doing that and I’m very proud of it.”
