Setting the (Weightlifting) Bar High

Lisa Fisco was happy with life as an Emmy Award-winning TV producer and mother of three until an ugly divorce turned her life upside-down. She spent eight years battling her ex and ended up unhappy, 100 pounds heavier and desperately in need of change.

Then Fisco found a new passion: weightlifting. The 50-year-old Southern California woman is training and hopes to compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

If she qualifies, Fisco would be the oldest woman weightlifter ever to compete in the games, but that doesn't scare her.

"As far as who is selected, the bottom line is who lifts the most weight," Fisco says. "There is no age restriction."

She was inspired to start lifting while working on an assignment for an entrepreneurship course at UCLA. Her assignment was to "remember your childhood dreams," and that brought back memories of lifting weights with her dad for fun.

Fisco went online and found an e-mail address for Mike Burgener, an Olympic weightlifting coach, and asked him, "How would you like to take a 47-year-old, totally out-of-shape mom and turn her into an Olympic weightlifter who goes for the gold?"

Burgener replied that day with an astounding, "Hell yeah, absolutely!"

Fisco started working out with Burgener and his daughter in San Diego, traveling four hours a day from Los Angeles to train.

Three years later, Fisco is still pumping iron. She works out three to four hours a day, five days a week, with a new trainer, Tom Delong. Fisco hits the gym in Newberry Park to lift for two hours in the morning and then returns at night to put in a few more hours.

"She's in there every day, hour after hour," says Delong. "I'm yelling at her to do it again and again until she gets it right."

Fisco knows hard work is the only road to Olympic success.

"There is no cheating in Olympic weightlifting," Fisco says. "You are only as good as you practice."

Fisco has had a strong interest in the Olympics ever since she was a child. In 2004, she took her children to the summer Olympic Games in Athens, where they watched swimmer Michael Phelps win gold. Fisco hopes to represent her country, too, and perhaps bring home a medal.

"I think about it all the time," she says. "I wouldn't even know what to say. It would be so amazing I couldn't even put words to it."

Regardless of how her Olympic dreams pan out, Fisco has already won, her coach says.

"Win, lose or draw, this is her passion," Delong says. "It's what she wants to do, so why not? She's telling people don't be afraid to go after what you want. We are inspiring thousands of people over the age of 40 to get up and do what they want to do."

Steve Lyons is a researcher at SecondAct.com.

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