After winning the bronze medal in powerlifting two years ago in Sweden, Moroccan champion Nezar Ballil is taking up a new challenge in the bench press category at the world championship next May in the town of Sun City in South Africa. South.
Ballil, African champion for the years 2013, 2019, 2020 and 2022, will have the challenge of participating for the first time in the bench press, which will be the only category contested at the world championship.
Powerlifting has three categories, namely the squat, the bench press and the deadlift.
Ballil, after having distinguished himself in the three categories, decided to specialize in the bench press despite the tough competition in this category.
Ballil, born in 1978 in Tangier, says he is aware of the difficulty of the challenge of this category which knows the participation of specialists who take part in all the competitions, unlike the triple category (squat, bench press and deadlift) where there are more chances of winning a medal.
In a statement to MAP, he said that qualifying for the world championship was not easy, because you had to achieve the minimum in your category (-150 kg), which he was able to achieve at the African championship. last September in Morocco, which he won while signing a new continental record.
He said that the next world championship will see the participation of four African countries, namely, in addition to Morocco, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa, which are pioneers in this category, while the Arab participation is limited this year to Syria represented by a single athlete.
Ballil says he prepared well for this championship and started his training program under national team coach Hamid Jamal two months ago, despite the slowing pace exercises during Ramadan which imposes several constraints, including dehydration and the short time between breaking the fast and fasting, which does not allow you to take enough of the nutritional elements necessary to achieve maximum performance.
He concluded that despite the tough competition at the world championship, he will do his best to win a medal.
Ballil began his career in powerlifting by qualifying for the African championship in 2013 in Morocco. After this first participation, he began to prepare in a professional way and he won the place of vice-champion of Africa in 2015.
After a three-year hiatus, he resumed competition in 2018 by participating in national events, before taking part in the world championship in Japan and occupying the ninth place in the world among more than 1256 participants from all over the world.
The same year, in March, he won first place in the African championship in South Africa in the open (breaking the record) and masters (bench press) categories and was crowned best sportsman of this edition. In 2019, he took part in the 2019 World Cup in Canada and took fourth place.