Special Report: IUKL World Kettlebell Championships, Budapest, October 22-24, 2021

It was the President’s fault.

“Are you going to Budapest for the IUKL World Championships?” I said.

"Are you?” Monsieur Faucher, SAM president, replied.

“Yes, I’d like to see it,” said I.

“Well, what about competing?” he asked.

“I think that’s out of the question: I’m sure I can’t do 10 minutes with 24Kg”

“You know, many competitors don’t last 10 minutes. So long as you can do six or so, I think that would be respectable. You’ll learn a great deal more on the competition platform than you ever will just training” he argued.

If I was to go, the first issue was which country I was going to represent. Although I live in France I’m still technically British. However, qualification events for the British team had taken place many months ago and the door was now closed. France, on the other hand, had not held any competitions this year because of the pandemic. It was therefore agreed that so long as I could complete some 7-minute tests to prove I was not going to embarrass my adopted country too badly, I could compete in French colours.

And thus it was that I set off to Budapest at the end of October to compete with the world’s best. My first real Kettlebell Sport competition was to be the World Championships. I had done a couple of online competitions during lockdown…but that was it.

In slightly kamikaze fashion I had decided to have a go at doing both the Biathlon (a two-parter consisting of the Jerk, with two 24Kg kettlebells and the Snatch with one 24Kg) and the Long Cycle (a single event which involves Cleaning and Jerking two 24Kg kettlebells). Points are awarded for the maximum number of good lifts in 10 minutes, or earlier if you put the kettlebells down before the time limit. I was competing in the Veterans 50 to 55 category.

The competition organisation was based at the Hotel Danubius which was coincidentally also hosting what seemed to be the ‘Miss Eastern Europe’ beauty pageant. Arriving in the lobby for my weigh-in, who should be there to greet me but Miss Serbia, Miss Moldova, Miss Albania and their rivals in cocktail dresses and country sashes? But of course.

Our equally charming SAM President was there too, ready to issue my outsize France team kit from his outsize suitcase. A communication error had led to XXXL for me and so the next three days of the competition were to be spent hoicking up the trousers of my giant shell suit while I gently stewed within.

The venue itself was a very hot and noisy gymnasium on the outskirts of the city. Hundreds of competitors had come from 32 countries as far afield as the US and India. Three intense days of sweat and multilingual shouting were to follow. The Irish were strong and vociferous, as indeed were the Americans, but former Eastern Bloc and Soviet countries dominated with the massive and mighty Russian team by far the most successful.

My own efforts began towards the end of the second day with the Jerk. A long build-up and delays to the start had elevated stress levels beyond what had already seemed maximum. Finally, we commenced. Things seemed to be going comparatively well until the judge started gesturing at me and commenting in Russian. I wasn’t sure then, and I’m still not sure now, what was amiss but I suspect it was a fixation issue. You are supposed to fully lock your arms with the kettlebells overhead and pause for a moment, the length of that moment being at the discretion of the judge. Around the sixth minute, as the effort was becoming overwhelming, he showed me a yellow card. One more fault and I was out! My head spinning and body turning to jelly, I eked out a few more reps before I could do no more, finishing with a respectable but certainly not podium-troubling, 46 repetitions.

An hour and fifteen minutes later I was back on the platform for the Snatch. The banana and water I had consumed following the jerk had utterly failed to restore my energy levels and the kettlebell felt heavy from the start. Nevertheless, I managed 92 reps and was exhausted but not too ashamed. It was late though and everything ached.

Early the following morning I was at it again for the Long Cycle. This time the cumulative fatigue was too much. After a minute or so, tunnel vision set in. A bit later my form deteriorated from not that great to terrible and given the unpalatable choice between humiliation and trying to swing two 24Kg kettlebells between my legs and raise them over my head one more time, I took the only option available to me, at a disappointing 14 reps.

After the dust had settled and we were back in Paris, friends and family kept asking me whether I’d enjoyed myself. “Err, ‘enjoy’ is not exactly the word that springs to mind but I’ll do it all again if I can. Hoping for bigger numbers next time.”