"Hot potato!" Shouts Nancy Carpenter. Four men and three women throw around a 5-kilogram (11-lb.) leather ball like it's a beach ball. It slams and bounces on the concrete floor.

This is a workout at the Boomerang power and weightlifting club at Douglas College, Vancouver. Here there is no music or flashy leotards. This gym is for serious workouts only with free weights. It's a second home for Carpenter who after a full day's work in a laboratory, commutes here one hour by public transit four days a week. A Canadian woman's master's weightlifting champion, Carpenter is a substitute coach for a group of 12 weightlifting enthusiasts -- including five women -- whose regular coach Gary Bratty who describes his student as "A fierce competitor with a will to succeed."

Women's weightlifting is poised to receive a major boost; it will be included for the first time in the 2000 Olympics. Women from some 60 countries will vie to meet the minimum competition requirements with China the odds on favorite for a gold, according to Dressdan Archibald, head of the Canadian Weightlifting Association. Eastern European countries are also expected to do well. Part of the reason is public perception of women in this traditionally male game.

"Women weightlifters in North America are judged [by the public and press] by their looks, while in Europe and Asia women are judged by their ability," said Carpenter.

Women's weightlifting in North America dates back to 1972 when Judy Glenney an American former track and field athlete and pioneering weight lifter competed alongside men in local and national power and weightlifting competitions in the U.S. Glenny, along with others, lobbied the American Weightlifting Association for separate women's competition amid "definite opposition from the men " recalls Glenney, now a member of the technical committee of the International Weightlifting Federation.

The first official American national women's meet was held 1981 in Waterloo, Iowa with 29 competitors. Six years later, the first Woman's International Meet was held in Florida and every year since a different country has sponsored this event.

Women lift by all the same rules as men, although the weight categories differ.

There are seven weight categories for women ranging from 42 to over 75kg, while men have ten categories ranging from 54 kg to over 108 kg. According to the International Weightlifting records as of January 1999, the most weight a woman has cleaned and jerked (that is, got over her head) is 155 kilos, compared to 205 kilograms by a man.

But in weightlifting, a lot of the strength comes from the lower body. Most women have greater lower body strength than upper. While women lack the upper body strength, they make up for it in flexibility and technique.

At age 43, Carpenter will be too old to compete on Canada's Olympic team, which will probably have about three female weighlifting contestants. Although there is no age limit in the Olympics there is also no special age categories for athletes over 35 who would have difficulty competing directly with younger ones in this sport.

Still, it is women like Carpenter who have helped lay the groundwork for their sisters in the Olympics.

After only two years of training beginning at age 39, Carpenter started entering and winning competitions. She was Canadian champion for her age, gender, and weight three times. In 1996, she won silver in the world's master women's weight

lifting competition -- for athletes over age 35 -- in Collingwood, Ontario, and she broke a world record by clean and jerking 57.5 kg. She continued to win national championships but was unable to compete in international competitions because of a lack of funds. This year her brother- in -law is sponsoring her in the World's Master's weight and power lifting tournament in Glasgow, Scotland to be held this September, where she will compete in the 40 to 45 age group.

Although she started late, Carpenter was six years old when she wanted to be as strong as Charles Atlas a popular American self-styled strongman who formulated a fitness and strength program. But growing up in the 60 and 70s as the second daughter of seven in an immigrant family from Hungary, Carpenter had limited athletic opportunities. Weightlifting for women was limited to "trimming and toning up the shins." Her grade nine science teacher told her not to lift too much because, "Your uterus will fall out and you will harm your reproductive organs," she said.

The scrappy 5'2" Carpenter made the women's college basketball team at the University of Victoria in British Columbia by making up in speed what she lacked in height. She became a high-school physical education teacher in Calgary, while joining a variety of amateur teams including men's baseball, touch football, basketball, road hockey and racket ball.

After changing careers to work as an assistant working for the University of British Columbia's biotechnology lab, and coping with deteriorating eye-sight, which made group sports difficult, Carpenter started seriously power and weightlifting in the 1980s. She was hooked.

"The thing I like most about weightlifting is the personal challenge. It is an individual sport; therefore only I am responsible for how I perform," said Carpenter.

But there were many obstacles. Many weightlifting gyms at the time were "men only." Carpenter finally found a gym that let her train, but she had to go through the men's locker room to get to the weight room. She sacrificed much of her social life and spent all her extra time and money on training and going to meets. She also had problems finding a coach till four years ago she met Bratty, a former Canadian and Pan American men's weightlifting champion who is an enthusiastic proponent of women's sports.

"Women are as tough as men," says Bratty, expressing a view little heard in male weightlifting circles.

Many women are discouraged from weightlifting because of the effects, real and perceived, of muscle building. For example, the changes in a woman's body can affect fertility. Women do bulk up and gain weight when weightlifting, although they do not have the same bulging muscles as body builders. Carpenter herself has gone from 54 to 69 kilograms in the course of her training and therefore has difficulty getting life insurance because according to their charts she is too heavy for her height.

Though not muscle bound like a female Arnold Shwarzenegger, she is compact and solid. She likes being strong and able to lift any amount of groceries and move furniture. She insists that she has not experienced any negative effects from all the exercise except sore muscles. Although she has never married or had children, she does know of quite a few women who have weight trained and went on to have families.

Although Carpenter lives and breathed the sport -- even sometimes sleeping on the bench press she keeps at home -- she says she is not disappointed to miss out on the Olympics.

"At my age and just recent entry into the weightlifting world, the Olympics would be an impossible dream," she said. "I do have Walter Mitty-like fantasies of turning 16 again and than having a shot at it. However, the reality is to do well in the 'masters' competition. The consolation prize is that for each five year age bracket I have a chance of setting new records."