Wait Is Over for Weightlifting Coach

Twenty years ago, Michael Cohen was on his way to Moscow as a weightlifter until the American-led Olympic boycott kept him home.

He didn’t fret, however. He was only 22, the youngest member of the U.S. team. Certainly, there would be other chances.

“I might have felt differently if I was older,” Cohen says now. “But I knew I would be going back. No problem.”

Little did he know that it would take two decades--and the addition of women to the sport--before he finally got to take part in his first Olympics.

Cohen, who has built one of the nation’s top strength programs in Savannah, will coach the U.S. team as women’s weightlifting makes it Olympic debut in Sydney. At least two of his lifters figure to make up the four-women squad, including teen-age phenom Cheryl Haworth, a top medal contender.

“It’s not so important that I’m going back 20 years late,” Cohen said. “It’s important that I’m going back with my athletes.”

Unlike most of his teammates in 1980, Cohen didn’t criticize President Carter’s decision to keep the Americans at home to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His position was set after talking with his father.

“He told me, ‘Son, this man is from Georgia. This man is our president. If he says you’re not going, you’re not going,”’ Cohen remembered.

At a news conference, one Olympic athlete after another took turns attacking the president. Then Cohen took the microphone. He told reporters he wasn’t familiar with the war halfway around world. After all, he was a weightlifter, not a politician. But Carter was the president and, “I back him 100 percent.”

“You talk about being an outcast,” Cohen said, able to chuckle about it these days.

In 1983, he set his sights on the Los Angeles Games by winning a national championship in his weight class and a silver medal at the Pan American Games. But a back injury shortly after the world championships ended his chances of making the team. He was named an alternate, “another way of saying you haven’t done anything,” Cohen said.

His last chance came four years later. At the trials, Cohen was in good position after the snatch, needing to lift 407 pounds in the clean-and-jerk. He had done that weight many times before and planned to go for it in his very first attempt.

“In my last warmup, while lifting 391 pounds, I tore my back up again,” Cohen said. “It was over. I tried my three attempts, but I had no chance. My dad had to carry me to the platform. I could hardly stand up.”

At the urging of his father, he went into coaching. He built Team Savannah from scratch, taking the program from an abandoned high school cafeteria to a 12,000-foot facility on the outskirts of this coastal city. Last year, he was named Olympic coach.

“He deserves the job,” said Robin Goad of Newnan, a probable member of the team who trains with a different coach. “I can’t imagine the amount of energy he put into building that team in Savannah. Now, he has the full backing of the community. It didn’t come easy. He had to earn that.”

Haworth showed up at Cohen’s door four years ago and quickly became a sensation, winning a bronze medal at last year’s world championships. While she is only 17 and probably a decade away from her prime, Cohen boldly predicts the 300-pounder will win a medal in Sydney, too.

“There’s no pressure on the men. But one of my four girls must win a medal,” Cohen said. “I’ll be blunt. If we don’t win a medal, I won’t have this job next time.”