Pei Xinyi (Photos IJF/Giorgio Scala/Deepbluemedia)
Pei Xinyi not only gave China its highlight of the first week at the IWF World Championships in Ningbo, she put in the best women’s performance of 2026 when she won the 61kg title in superb style, leading the host nation to a 1-2 finish.
China ended North Korea’s winning run when Pei made all six attempts for 112-142-254, taking world records from the silver and bronze medallists in the process.
Xinyi surpassed 250kg in a recent national competition but on the international stage this was her first appearance for two years, and her first victory since she won a senior world title as a 17-year-old on her debut in 2022.
On Sinclair (341) and GAMX (1286) points this was the best senior women’s total of the year. It equalled Ri Suk’s world-record total for North Korea at the Asian Championships in May in the old 63kg category.
Xinyi , 25, took the clean and jerk world record from third-placed Pak Jin Hae from PRK, and the record on total from her 19-year-old team-mate Yang Liuyue, who failed with a brave final attempt at 145kg.
Liuyue, who held on to her snatch world record, made 110-139-249 from four good lifts and Xinyi finished 105-138-243.
This is one of the weight categories China is targeting for Los Angeles, and it’s easy to see why. The team has two athletes in four of the categories in Ningbo, and head coach Shao Guoqiang explained on the National Olympic Committee’s website: “Selecting two top-tier athletes for the same category acts as a double insurance mechanism.
“It guarantees a gold-medal threat while allowing the coaching staff to gauge the absolute peak international standards under the reconfigured Olympic weight classes.”
Kuo Hsing-Chun from Chinese Taipei also made six from six for her best result since April 2021, aged 32. Hsing-Chun, the Tokyo champion and Paris bronze medallist who is trying to qualify for her fifth Olympic Games, made 104-137-241.
Karen Mosquera from Colombia took snatch silver and would have won the best celebration award if there was one. She screamed and slapped the platform in delight, then screamed some more after making three-from-three in snatch. She finished fifth on 111-125-236.
The United States also had two women in the A Group. Katie Estep made 104-130-234 for sixth place and Sophie Shaft made only her third snatch attempt at 105kg, failing three times in clean and jerk on 130kg.
Another Olympic champion, Maude Charron from Canada, failed with her final two attempts in making 105-126-231 in seventh place.
Rebeka Ibrahima, whose last appearance at the Olympic Games was 10 years ago, took her first step towards Los Angeles 2028 in the B Group. It was hard work – she made only her openers, declined her last two attempts and finished 96-115-211, which is less than she was making in a lighter category nine years ago. But it is a start.
Her near miss in the 2016 Olympic Games, where she competed for Latvia under her previous name of Rebeka Koha, still hurts, she said. She failed on her final attempt in Rio and finished fourth as an 18-year-old.
In a recent TV interview in Latvia, Ibrahima spoke about the changes in her life and her determination to qualify for the Olympics again to deal with “unfinished business” in the sport.
She retired in 2020 after marrying the Qatari discus thrower Moaz Ibrahim and converting to Islam. There was more upheaval when Ibrahima and her two young children left their home in Qatar after “I felt the house shake” during hostilities in the Gulf region.
They are now back in her home town in Ventspils and Ibrahima, who had surgery on both knees last year, trains with her long-time coach Eduards Andruskevics.
