David “Chip” Kent performing the snatch maneuver
at the 2001 American Open in Decem-ber. He is lifting
150 kilograms (that’s 330 lbs.).

Grad student weighs in on hobby

He removes calluses on his hands with a power drill. He can lift one and a half times his body weight above his head in seconds. He competes in weightlifting meets while conducting research at Caltech.

He is David “Chip” Kent, a third-year graduate student studying theoretical and computational chemistry, who originally hails from Texas, outside of Houston.

Though he’s 24 years old, he’s retired twice. Once he started attending Caltech, he decided to come out of retirement.

“In Southern California there’s an unusually large percent of good lifters,” he said. Not so with good coaches, who are hard to find.

But after a lengthy search, he hooked up with Mike Burgener in Bonsall, near San Diego. Burgener’s son, Casey, 20, is on the United States Olympic weightlifting team. Kent drives down there twice a week to train.

“If you decide you’re going to do something you’ll be able to,” he said. “A lot of people here get obsessed with work. It’s very difficult to get people to do outside activities outside of work.”

Although he appears triumphant in his photograph from a recent New York City meet, Kent didn’t do as well overall as he’d like, placing 11th in his weight class of 105 kilos, or 237 lbs.

“I did pretty terrible,” he said.

Each weight lifter gets three attempts for two lifts, called the snatch and the clean and jerk.

Physically strong, Kent nonetheless made mistakes. One time he accidentally stepped off the platform. Another time the bar was too close and he jerked it into his chin. Trying to avoid that on the next attempt, he overcompensated and couldn’t lift the weight over his head.

Since then, Kent’s been training five or six days a week in Pasadena, each session lasting an hour and a half. His most recent meet was the National Collegiate Weightlifting Championship in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he competed on Team Southern California this past weekend, and placed third in his weight class. Kent’s two recent meets were sponsored by the Graduate Office, which helped pay for the expenses.

“I think it’s great that he’s doing this, and when I heard he was competing I wanted to help,” said Dean of Graduate Studies Rod Kiewiet.
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