The 2022 Equipped world championships are underway in Viborg, Denmark and we had a cracker of a session to kick us off with the 47kg class. Sue Elwyn USVI extended her own M4 squat world record to 95kg on her second attempt and Tetiana Bila of Ukraine laid down an early marker, taking the squat silver with a massive 180kg. Bronze went to Chinese Taipei’s Tzu-Yin Tseng with 170kg. However, the big story was Japan’s Yukako Fukushima. 6 time powerlifting world champion, at 52 years old she won the gold medal at this year’s World Games. She started as she meant to carry on – she took the gold medal on squat and increased her own M2 world record to 182.5kg. On to bench and Kotomi Hayakawa of Japan leapt into contention with 107.5kg for the silver. Bila looked calm and assured throughout, making all her benches look easy and snagging the bronze with 105kg. Fukushima dominated here too with a new M2 world record of 130kg. This gave Fukushima a decent lead but, at sub-total, Bila and Hayakaw...