Vanessa Sarno doesn’t want to put too much pressure on herself as she shoots for an Olympic ticket in the IWF World Cup in Phuket, Thailand from 31 March to 11 April.
The 20-year-old Sarno, a gold medalist in the 32nd Southeast Asian Games, said she wants to stay relaxed and composed as she marches into the prestigious tourney that serves as the final qualifier for the Paris Olympics.
Right now, Sarno is at sixth place in the women’s 71-kilogram rankings with her best lift tallied at 249 kilograms at the IWF World Grand Prix 2 in Doha last December.
She needs to stay in the top 10 of the Paris 2024 Olympic Qualification Rankings if she wants to make her debut in the Summer Games.
“I’m aiming for 110 kgs in snatch and 143 kgs in my clean-and-jerk in Thailand. I just need to maintain my ranking to get into Paris,” Sarno said.
“We can think about getting into the top three once I qualify for Paris.”
Sarno has the right reason to take it easy as she suffered a back injury during the 2024 AWF Asian Championships in Tashkent last February.
The 2020 Asian Championships gold medalist said her coaches even advised her to not gauge her limits and focus on the bigger goal of getting an outright berth to the biggest sporting event in the world.
“My coaches told me to not pressure myself on my lifts and stay focused on our goal to qualify for the Olympics,” Sarno said.
“I also see every loss as a lesson for me to do better in the next tournaments. I will use it as motivation in my next tournaments.”
