Sarkisian's son carries weight of expectation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation7.30 Report
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION
Broadcast: 15/12/2005
Reporter: Geoff Hutchison

TRACY BOWDEN: The Commonwealth Games are now just 90 days away and for athletes still to qualify these are exciting but anxious times. One young man bearing a considerable burden is weightlifting hopeful David Sarkisian. If he does qualify at this weekend's national trials in Melbourne he'll create a remarkable first - he'll be joining his famous father Yourik in the Australian team. Armenian-born Yourik Sarkisian is a phenomenon in the sport of weightlifting. A five time world champion, he is still a competitor of enormous determination - even at 44, an age where most of the world's best have long since retired. But sport is filled with stories of the pressures faced by the sons of famous fathers, and young David Sarkisian clearly carries the weight of great expectations. Geoff Hutchison reports.
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GEOFF HUTCHISON: It might be kinder to call Yourik Sarkisian single minded but it would be more accurate to call him obsessive. For not only is he, at 44 years of age, the oldest former world weightlifting champion still competing, his hunger for records and medals is as great as it was 25 years ago when as a 19-year-old he won a silver medal for the Soviet Union at the Moscow Olympics.

YOURIK SARKISIAN: First, this is the men's sport, second this is the power sport, you know, and this is not with everybody else, this is only tough people, you know.
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GEOFF HUTCHISON: The archive of Yourik Sarkisian's early career tells a story of great success overseen by a stern Soviet bureaucracy. He first competed in Australia in 1985 and remembers his team doctor being a man of limited medical expertise, primarily because he wasn't a doctor at all, he was a KGB agent. Yourik Sarkisian returned to Melbourne for the World Championships in 1993, this time representing Armenia, and so liked what he saw he decided to make Australia home. Seven years later he was still good enough to hold the bar high at Sydney, and two years later won another three gold medals at the Manchester Commonwealth Games at the age of 41. And all the while this irrepressible, driven man was nurturing another ambition - for his son David to follow him into the limelight. Even as a nine-year-old, David Sarkisian was being hothoused.

DAVID SARKISIAN: I want to hopefully be an - at least Olympic champion. That's the main thing that I do want, because my dad missed out, he got a second. I want that one gold and that's it.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: When Australia's new Commonwealth Games uniforms were unveiled last week, David Sarkisian modelled them alongside established team members like Brooke Hanson and Matt Welsh, but he still has to earn his place at trials in Melbourne this weekend. He should be good enough to qualify in the 69 kilogram division, but competition will be intense.

DAVID SARKISIAN: I feel pressure from everyone. I feel pressure, like right now, right at this moment, I feel pressure from you guys coming. I must qualify, I must do good and must try to get a medal, you know. It's pressure from everyone. The whole country is on you, you've got to try and do good.
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