During a workout with her husband at their local gym, Teresa Gilman had a man approach her.
He simply told Gilman how impressed he was that she was lifting provincial record weight numbers, and that she should consider trying the sport of power lifting.
Gilman's response to the stranger?
"Power lifting? I'd never heard of it. I said no, right away," said Gilman, 52 who along with her fellow gym rat husband, Mike Gilman, decided to look further into what the stranger had said.
The stranger happened to be Barry Antoniow, 10-time undefeated Canadian Bench Press champion, two-time world record holder, and once the owner of a No. 9 world ranking. Antoniow is from Ontario but happens to have a house in the North Okanagan.
Two weeks after that chance meeting two years ago at World Health and Fitness Gym on Highway 6 in Vernon, the Gilmans hired Antoniow to become Teresa's power lifting coach.
Since then, Gilman has won regional, provincial, Western Canadian, Canadian, and North American titles in her age class, which earned her a spot on Team Canada. She will compete at the 2025 World Bench Press Classic and Equipped Championships, which begin Sunday, May 18, in Draamen, Norway.
"It's my first time to worlds and I'm feeling great," said Gilman, a few days before she and Mike left for Portugal for a two-week pre-World Championship vacation. "It's been about a year-and-a-half since I started, and I've been learning how to monitor and keep my weight under the required limit, watching my diet. This is my first really big show."
Gilman will compete in the Masters 2 Female Division (aged 50-59) in the 76 kilogram, or 167 pound, class. To compete in Norway, she has to meet the weight requirement. That means no wine, no alcohol, no fancy Portuguese cuisine.
"Some competitors are heavier and don't have to cut weight," said her husband, Mike. "She's three pounds over so she has to cut down to make weight."
The 2025 IPF World Classic and Equipped Bench Press Championship has specific rules for classic and equipped bench pressing. For classic bench pressing, athletes must use a one-piece lifting singlet, or shirt, and no bench shirt is allowed.
Equipped bench pressing allows a bench shirt made of polyester, denim, or canvas.
In bench press, a lifter must lie on their back with their buttocks, shoulders, and head in contact with the bench, and their feet must be flat on the floor. The weight bar then has to be lowered to the check, with the underside of the elbow level or below the top of the shoulder point.
The bar has to be pressed upward to a locked-out position, and the bar can't move back down after a press command. If a lifter can't press the bar to the full extension of the arms, if there's any movement of the feet with the bench, or there's contact made with spotters, the lift will be considered a fail.
A former owner of a pharmaceutical company with her husband, which they sold and then retired, Gilman won the Canadian championship in Prince Edward Island in September 2024 in her age and weight category. She pressed 75 kgs in the classic bench event.
That qualified Gilman for the North American championships in Costa Rica in October, and she duplicated her national title with a 75 kg press.
Any questions she may have about competing at a world championship she can ask fellow gym rat Marc Vezina.
He, too, is from Vernon, and World Health and Fitness, and is returning a year after finishing fourth in the Masters 3 Male (age 60-69) 83 kg (181 pounds) equipped bench press category at the World Championships in Austin, TX. Vezina lifted a provincial record of 132.5 kgs.
He was sixth in Austin in the classic bench press, lifting 110 kgs.
"I came back to bench press in the last 15 years," said Vezina, 66, a former French teacher, school principal, and vice-principal. "I've been involved since 1980, started through some friends in Quebec City. I competed for six years before an injury, then I moved to B.C. in 2000. I took about an 11-year break."
Vezina earned his trip to Norway by first capturing the Canadian championship in his age and weight category in PEI with a classic bench press of 100 kgs, and made 120 kgs in the equipped event.
Both Vernon lifters have different goals for Norway.
Gilman hopes to land in the top-third of her class with a classic press of 85 kilos. Vezina wants to be top-six in the equipped, and top-12 in the classic.
"Our goal this year is to enjoy it and get three lifts," he said. "The rest? We'll see."
Close to 70 countries are expected to be represented at the World Championships in Norway.
