From Cambodia to Delhi, via Australia for Vannara Be [-We are proud of you also, Vannara!]

Weightlifter Vannara Be impresses Indian ladies at the athletes village. Picture: Alex Coppel Source: News Limited

October 01, 2010
Mike Colman in Delhi
The Australian

HIS uncle was a boat person, a refugee from Pol Pot's reign of terror. His father was an immigrant who bent his back dawn to dusk picking grapes to provide his family with a future. Now Commonwealth Games weightlifter Vannara Be has become the first Cambodian-born athlete to represent Australia.

So how does he feel?

"Surprised actually," he said after being presented to the media. "I didn't know until someone just told me."

But if Victoria-based Be was vague about his standing in Australian sporting history, he has total clarity about his own family history and the terrible affect the Pol Pot regime had upon it.

"My aunty and uncle were murdered, my grandmother lost an eye," the 22 year-old said. "They say she cried so much when she lost her children that it just disappeared."

In the early 1980s, Be's uncle managed to flee Cambodia for Thailand, then got on a boat to Australia. By 1996 he had become a citizen and on a trip home to Phnom Penh urged Be's uncle to join him in the new country.

"Dad came out on a short-term visa. My aunty was working on a vineyard in the Yarra Valley and dad tagged along and worked with her. When it came time for him to leave, the lady who owned the farm asked him to stay. He said he couldn't leave his family behind so she did all the work to get us all to Australia. It was all because my father had worked so hard."

Just four years old when he arrived in Australia, Be proved he too was a hard worker, helping his parents pick grapes and carrying them in crates from an early age.

"Maybe that's where I got my strength from. Who knows?"

While the source of his talent is a mystery - there is no culture of weightlifting in Cambodia although Be's three sisters have all taken up the sport - there is no question about his earliest motivation.

"I took it up because playing sport meant you could get time off school," he said. "If you were in a competition you could get a whole day off."

The turning point of his career came when the family gained permanent residency last year.

"Before that we were always wondering if we would have to go back to Cambodia," he said. "I had no real goal because I didn't know what my future was. I'd only train once or twice a week. Then when we knew we would be staying I got serious."

Competing in the 62kg class, Be has a best lift of 115kg in snatch and 138kg in the clean and jerk.

While none of his family will be in Delhi, he knows they will be watching him compete on television.

"My mother is so proud, she is ringing me every day," he said.