World Kettlebell Sport

On Saturday 27th March Australia saw its biggest kettlebell sport meet to date: a whopping 7 competitors!  Now in many other countries this sounds very, very small, but in Australia, where kettlebell sport has only really been accessible to people for about a eighteen months this was BIG.
The competition was held at Kettlebell Athletica in Melbourne.  So big was the lure of the event that a couple of people even came from interstate to attend.  One of the biggest problems with kettlebell sport in Australia is that their population is very spread out over a very large land mass, so it's very difficult to get everyone together for a meet.

Even though they don't takes their kettlebell competitions too seriously at this stage (because they're such newbies) and the aim of the game is fun and to hopefully get a PB, the competitors (including myself) were pretty nervous beforehand and anxious to get started.

Australian kettlebell lifters are trying to increase the standard of lifing in Australia by having formal judging, and this was the first competition where they tried this out and even handed out a few no counts for illegal reps.  So with two platforms and two judges the comp was ready to roll.

Every competitor, without exception, gave it their all and more hit a PB on the platform.  The spectators, most of whom had never seen a live kettlebell sport competition, were very quiet during competitors' sets but gave hearty applause after.  Any of them didn't found it boring - ten minutes goes much faster when you're watching!

There were also some strongman demonstrations, some juggling and a kettlebell relay race to finish off the day.

They will continue to strive to improve the quality of kettlebell lifting in Australia and attract more competitors to their meets.

Here are the results:

Thanks Emily Friedel for info (http://achyball.com)