By Artie Drechsler © 2024
In the summer of 1976, a six-year-old girl and her father were staying up past her bedtime to watch the gymnastics competition being held at the Olympics in Montreal. Fixated on, and inspired by, what she saw, that little girl turned to her father and said “I’m going to get a USA suit like theirs someday”.
Many years later, when she had earned the right to represent the US in a World Championship, but in the completely different sport of Weightlifting, her father remembered that 1976 turning point in his young daughter’s life when he said “Well you’ve finally gotten your sweatsuit”. It was a moment that she will never forget.
And she did not just earn her USA sweatsuit, symbolizing earning a coveted spot on a World Championship team, but she wore that suit to win a world championship and to set a world record.
Ultimately, she also got to wear a USA suit to compete in the very first women’s weightlifting competition ever held at an Olympic Games, something she’d dreamed about 24 years earlier. This is the story of how she did all of that and more.
Robin was far from an instant success in Weightlifting. She began training with weights around 1982, as an adjunct to her gymnastics practice, her main sport at the time. Her gymnastics coach, and first weightlifting coach, Greg Shellnut, had been a competitive weightlifter and he introduced Robin to the fundamentals of Olympic-style weightlifting, in part to improve her performance in gymnastics.
It was about this time that a man named John Coffee, a man who would become a legendary weightlifting coach, approached Greg Shellnut, who he knew from seeing Greg compete in local Weightlifting competitions.
He asked Greg whether he had any small gymnasts who Greg thought would be good at weightlifting. Greg mentioned Robin, and John got to see her lift in a meet shortly thereafter, in October of 1982.
John was impressed by what he saw, and invited Robin to represent Coffee’s Gym in the Weightlifting Nationals coming up in May of 1983. Robin’s performance at that Nationals was something of a disappointment, in that she failed to make the 44 kg. weight limit for her usual weight class. Nevertheless, lifting in the next higher weight class, she managed to place sixth. And she enjoyed the experience, so she continued to train for Weightlifting on and off with coach Shellnut, and to represent Coffee’s in various competitions over the next two years, locally and nationally.
She placed fourth at the 1984 Nationals, lifting in the 48 kg. bodyweight category, improving her total by 7.5 kg. over what she had done the prior year.
In 1985, Robin was offered the opportunity to become a cheerleader, but that presented a dilemma. She was already involved in gymnastics and weightlifting and her parents, who were both educators, were concerned that too many outside activities would hurt Robin’s academic performance. So they asked her to choose just two activities, and, thankfully for USA weightlifting aficionados, she chose cheerleading and weightlifting.
With greater concentration on weightlifting Robin began to progress dramatically. While she placed fourth again at the 1985 Nationals, it was in the 52 kg. bodyweight category. However, she posted a much-improved total (110 kg. in 1985 vs. 85 kg. in 1984).
By 1986, coach Shellnut found that he simply could coach Robin in weightlifting any longer, given his other responsibilities. So, with the consent of all parties, he turned responsibility for coaching Robin over to John Coffee. At the Nationals that year, Robin managed to earn her first medal at a Nationals, by placing second.
At this point, John began to write Robin’s training programs, and to drive from his home in Marietta one day per week to watch Robin train in Newnan Georgia (Robin’s home town and the home town of another famous weightlifter and coach – Ben Green). Robin would drive to John’s gym a couple of times per week to train with John and the other women on his now famous team.
John slowly increased Robin’s training schedule from the three days per week program that she had been doing with Greg to the five days per week – a schedule she would generally follow for the rest of her career.
Coffee worked with her to polish her technique and challenged her mind to think of bigger things in weightlifting. Robin began to grow further as a weightlifter, gradually developing into the weightlifting powerhouse that she became.
While she failed to make a total at the 1987 Nationals, Robin earned a spot on the US team competing at the very first Women’s World Championships, held in Daytona Beach, FL in the fall of that year. She lifted brilliantly there, earning silver medals in the snatch, C&J and total.
The following year, she won her first Nationals by a wide margin and then went on to win three more medals at the 1988 World Championships.
She continued to progress in 1989, winning that year’s Nationals and breaking the American Record in the snatch twice in one day.
The following year she was off to another great start at the Nationals, breaking her American Record in the snatch, but she hurt elbow during the snatch event, so had to withdraw from the meet and forfeit her attempt to win the Nationals again that year.
Many an athlete would have been terribly disappointed by the combination of an injury and failing to place, but in Robin’s words, “It just made me mad”.
So in 1991, she came back with a vengeance. After winning the Nationals by a large margin, she went on to win two silver medals and one bronze medal at the Worlds that year.
Despite new injuries which required arthroscopic surgery, she came back again, winning the Nationals in 1992, placing second at the World Championships overall, and winning two medals in the process. But there was more to come before the year ended.
When she was invited to the IWF World Cup Gala competition in December of 1992, she astonished the weightlifting world by snatching a world record and placing second in the overall competition (which had athletes in many weight categories ranked on the basis of proximity to the world record in their weight class). Up until that time, athletes from China had owned all of the records in Robin’s bodyweight category, ever since world records were first recognized by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) at the end of 1987.
In 1993, Robin won the Nationals once again, this time breaking American Records in the snatch, C&J and total. In addition, Robin’s sister Christy won the Nationals as well, in the next lighter bodyweight category. This marked the first and only time two siblings had managed to win a Nationals in the same year! That remains the case to date.
Later that year, Robin placed second at the Worlds, earning another two medals. This reinforced her commitment to improve further, so she trained with a vengeance despite moving to Seattle in May of 1994 (the home of her future husband, Dean Goad, who Robin would soon wed).
At the 1994 Nationals, Robin moved down a weight class, to 50 kg., where she set American Records in both the snatch and total. And as if that wasn’t enough, her American snatch record actually exceed the world record (but her lift was not recognized as a record due to certain technical rules in place at that time).
That spectacular performance inspired Robin further, and finally, after years of trying, Robin won the World’s Championship in 1994 (her joy in so doing was captured exquisitely in the Bruce Klemens photo above that introduced this article).
The following year Robin won still another Nationals, at 54 kg. this time, and in 1996 she won the Nationals once again, again at 54 kg.
But the following year she was unable to compete at the Nationals, due to an injury.
It should be noted that while Robin was accumulating championships, medals and records during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, she had taken on another role – advocate for the inclusion of women’s weightlifting in the Olympic Games. She lobbied for this at the international events she attended, while serving on a USA Weightlifting Women’s Committee, created by the USAW President Murray Levin to advocate for women’s lifting, nationally and worldwide.
In that connection, Robin developed a relationship with staff members of the Atlanta Constitution, Georgia’s leading newspaper, well prior to the 1996 Olympic Games. When they learned that women’s weightlifting would not be part of the Games, they worked with her to shine a spotlight on the unfairness of the Olympic program in this regard.
Robin’s passion, likability and determination made her very effective in her advocacy role. Some were upset when she and others organized a very peaceable demonstration at the 1996 weightlifting venue, bringing attention to the plight of women with respect to Weightlifting at the Olympics. However, I don’t think officials at the IOC ever wanted to see such a thing again, and there was only one way to assure that – giving women the opportunity to compete at the Games in the sport of Weightlifting.
Robin was back at the Nationals in 1998, where she placed second to Melanie Pitchard-Kosoff in the 53 kg. bodyweight category. Then she went on to the World Championships to earn still another three medals, this time all bronze.
In 1999 Robin won the 53 kg. category at the Nationals. She then travelled to the very first Pan American Games in which women were permitted to compete in Weightlifting. And she won the gold medal there.
After being unable to win any medals at the 1999 Worlds, Robin faced a difficult decision. The 2000 Olympic Games was to include a women’s competition for the first time. Above all, for many reasons, she wanted to make that first women’s USA Olympic Team in Weightlifting.
After much soul searching and consultation with coach Coffee and others, Robin decided her best chance was at 48 kg., even though she had not competed at that low a bodyweight for some time.
She appeared at the Nationals in that bodyweight and had a colossal battle with Tara Nott, Tara outlifting Robin in the C&J to beat her on bodyweight (they had the same total, which Robin did before Tara, but in those days ties were broken by bodyweight not lifting order).
While Robin was disappointed by taking second at the Nationals, the tremendous performances by both she and Tara earned them each spots on the very first women’s team to represent the United States at the Olympic Games!
At the opening ceremony of the 2000 Games, Robin finally realized the Olympic dream she expressed to her father 24 years earlier, while watching the 1976 Games. Although her father had passed away before the Games, he knew Robin had a good chance to compete in Sydney. In her father’s memory, she carried his picture as she marched in that opening ceremony of the Games.
Robin placed fifth in the 2000 Games and Tara won the gold medal, while Cheryl Haworth, lifting in the 75+ kg. bodyweight category, earned a bronze medal at the age of 17. So this was a great outing for the USA’s first women’s Olympic Team in the sport of Weightlifting.
It should be noted that Robin was the only athlete on that historic 2000 team who was also part of the US team at the very first Women’s World Championships 1987 – what a career!
How Did Robin Train?
Never one to simply follow what others were doing, Robin and John Coffee artfully marched to their own drummer when it came to training. While many athletes were training six days a week, twice a day, she trained following a program that she and John had developed for Robin over the years.
That consisted of training five days per week, one time per day (when she as with John in Georgia she would sometimes train twice per day, but her schedule as a full time school teacher did not permit such as schedule later).
Well before a major competition, during her “preparatory” training phase, she emphasized, halting pulls, power snatches, cleans and leg work. As a competition approached, she did more deadlifts and shrugs, which ended with her standing on her toes in the fully extended position (Robin feels that this exercise not only built her pulling strength but it required her to pull straight – pull too far forward or back and you cannot remain on your toes at the finish). As the contest approached, Robin emphasized more squat lifts, as opposed to the power snatches and cleans that she had mixed into her training during the preparatory phase.
Her best lifts in training were: power snatch 75 kg., snatch 85 kg., power clean 92.5 kg., clean 100 kg., jerk from rack 105 kg., front squat 110 kg. and back squat 140 kg.
Reflecting on Her Beginnings and Support Team
As Robin reflects on her career she fondly recognizes the important roles that such people as Greg Shellnut, Ben Green and her teammates played in her career. But she truly feels that she owes her greatest thanks to her parents and to John Coffee.
Robin says that today, as she thinks about her early life in Georgia and how very supportive her parents were. She deeply appreciates the incredible support they gave to her financially, emotionally and intellectually, helping her to reach her full potential.
She says “As I reflect on myself, my brothers and my sister, I realize that my parents somehow instilled in all of us the belief that we could be whatever we wanted to be and I marvel at what a great achievement that is.”
With regard to John, Robin realizes how much John helped her with her lifting and her life, always there to give her the support that she needed while throwing up new challenges “to get me mad”.
A Few Other Points About Robin’s Career
Robin’s Weightlifting career was filled with accomplishments on and off the platform (she won more Nationals, and more World Championship medals than any woman in USA Weightlifting history).
I hope I’ve given readers a sense of her magnificent achievements in this article. However, we don’t want to close our story about Robin without talking a little more about other members of her family.
While her parents and siblings were great supporters of her efforts, her husband, Dean Goad. was quite a lifter in his own right, winning five nationals, competing in the World Championships and Pan American Games (he won a bronze medal at the 1991 Pan Am Games). Moreover, they both won several Nationals in the same year, after they were married – in 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1999 (no other couple has won even one Nationals in the same year).
In addition, their daughter. Sydney Goad, and Son, Dean Jr., have won multiple age group nationals and represented the USA at several Youth and/or Junior international events. Quite a family!
For many years Robin has run a gymnastics training center in Newnan, GA. And she has rendered service to USA Weightlifting in many ways over the years, such as serving on the Hall of Fame Committee (after being inducted into the USAW HOF herself a number of years earlier).
Robin has given the USA and world weightlifting community much to smile about across her tremendous career. And those of us who’ve watched her will never forget her 1994 smile after winning the World Championships – a smile that made all of those in American Weightlifting do the same!