Draft:Paul Coffa

Paul Coffa is an Australian weightlifting coach. He has coached 540 weightlifters from 15 nations since 1965. He was awarded an MBE, and the Australian Sport Medal in 2000.

Early life
Together with his brother Sam Coffa they emigrated to Australia from Sicily in the early 1950s.

Paul Coffa became a junior world record holder in the clean and jerk, lifting 117.5 kg when he weighed 56kg. Though Paul weighed slightly over the category of -56 kg.

Career
He watched athletes train in a gym near his home of Hawthorn (Melbourne, VIC) for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.

In 2022 he became the first weightlifting coach to be inducted into the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame.

Occasionally talented athletes such as Eileen Cikimatana shift from their original countries to represent Australia. Often due to political disputes.

Coffa says that his coaching career began when during his last competition as an athlete in 1965 in his early twenties and “All three referees judged my first and last attempts in the press a no-lift, and I didn’t make the second one. I was disqualified and I abused the referees for not knowing the rules, so I quit lifting."

He has been the chief organiser of 70 events including the 1993 IWF World Championships in Melbourne and the 2011 IWF Junior World Championships in Malaysia.

Coffa plans to retire after Eileen Cikamatana competes at Paris 2024 Olympics.

The Father of Weightlifting in the Pacific region
“The father figure of weightlifting in the Pacific region” - Stephen, President of the Oceania Weightlifting Federation

Coffa helped promote the sport in Nauru after moving there. In the late 1990s Nauru at one point (with a population of 9,500 at the time) had more IWF registered weightlifters than China.

Coffa coached Marcus Stephen who won the first gold medal in any sport for Nauru at the 1994 Olympic Games.

Other athletes coached by Paul Coffa include Dean Lukin, Eileen Cikamatana, Robert Kabbas and Stefan Botev.

Life
The Coffa brothers were both awarded the gold star, in 2018 by Italy’s National Olympic Committee.