Taranaki mum Ashleigh Hoeta lifted more than 300kg over the weekend, becoming the first woman to break that benchmark – and she did it with her father's inspiration behind her.
Hoeta bench-pressed 317.5kg in equipped powerlifting. It comes just a few years after she suffered a stroke.
"It still hasn't sunken in, I've been taking it day by day," she told Breakfast. "I still can't really believe it's happened."
Hoeta's father died about a month ago, and his resilience was a key factor in his daughter's drive.
"It was just the way that he would constantly bounce back," she said.
"He would get really sick and end up in the hospital, and then he would come right.
"It was the fact that, if he was OK, he'd be doing it alongside with me – so it was kind of just a way to cope and to do it for the both of us."
And Hoeta doesn't plan to stop here.
"The sky's the limit really," she said. "A year ago I didn't think this was possible, and now we've achieved that.
"So yeah, we'll just keep going from here."
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