Shafaq News/ The coronavirus did not leave a lifestyle without affecting it negatively, which forced people to change their activities and daily routines into what fits with the pandemic, and try to be content with the minimum requirements that’s practiced in austerity.

Sports activities were included in that negative effect, for it was practiced in alternative places imposed by the conditions of the epidemic as well as the curfew and the restrictions of social gatherings.

Perhaps the sports of weightlifting bears the consequences more than others, as it was practiced by athletes in group halls that serve to develop their bodies and aspirations broadly.

Muhammad Shams Al-Din, the Asian and international champion of physical sports for 20 years, who can lift up to 500 kg, is one of the victims of the curfew, said to Shafaq News Agency, “I have been practicing weightlifting for 20 years..But since the outbreak of Coronavirus in Kirkuk and Iraq as in the world, we stopped practicing our sport for three weeks, so I have been practicing with my family in our private hall for a month now.”

Adding, we are a family of eight, five of us love this sport, my wife and I, two of my sons and my daughter are all weightlifting athletes.

For her part, Shams Al-Din’s wife , Midia Fadhl Allah says, “after the outbreak of Coronavirus, the sports hall was closed, but our family continued training”, adding that, “I have been practicing for two and a half years, participated in two local championships in which I won the first place and two Asian championships and won a gold medal . I was nominated for the world’s championship of physical strength in Russia as the first Iraqi woman but sadly when I returned to Iraq, I did not find any support, no one even congratulated me for my victory or being in an international championship”