“What is invisible are the thoughts that race through the athletes’ heads during this brief and excruciating purgatory. Does it seem brief? For that matter, is it excruciating? “When the weight is above my head, I think about my mother,” said Iulia Paratova of Ukraine in a postevent interview Sunday. “I don’t know why that happens. But I always think about my mother.”
— For Olympic Weight Lifters, Event Is More Than Momentary Lift - NYTimes.com
