New Zealand has named a seven-strong weightlifting team for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, and the squad reads as a neat snapshot of where the sport sits in this country right now. There is one proven champion at the front of it, a clutch of young lifters about to feel the lights of a major Games for the first time, and a steady tilt towards the women’s divisions that have quietly become the team’s centre of gravity.
The most familiar name is David Liti, the big heavyweight from south Auckland who has carried New Zealand weightlifting on his shoulders for the best part of a decade. Liti won gold at the Gold Coast in 2018 and followed it with silver at Birmingham in 2022, and in Glasgow he goes for something no New Zealand weightlifter has ever managed, a medal at three separate Commonwealth Games. He will lift in the men’s over 110 kilogram category, where his size and his calm under the bar have made him one of the most recognisable faces in the team.
Liti is a two-time Olympian as well, and at this stage of his career he is as much a leader as a competitor. The rest of the squad is built around him rather than the other way round, and several of the lifters heading to Glasgow grew up watching him win.
Joining Liti in the men’s events are Cameron McTaggart in the 88 kilogram class and Marco Mollo at 79 kilograms. McTaggart is making his third Commonwealth Games appearance and doubles as a coach within the team, the sort of dual role that small sports lean on heavily. Mollo earned his spot with a strong showing at the Oceania Championships in Samoa two months ago.
The depth, though, is in the women’s divisions, where five of the seven selected athletes will compete. Litia Nacagilevu takes the 86 kilogram class, Georgia Theron the 77 kilogram class, Tui-Alofa Patolo the over 86 kilogram class, and Olivia Selemaia the 69 kilogram class. For a team this size, having five women wearing the fern is a clear sign of where the talent has been coming through.
Selemaia is one to watch. She has been lifting since she was 12, won silver at the 2025 Junior World Championships, and finished eighth in the 69 kilogram division at the senior world championships in Norway last October. Glasgow will be her first Commonwealth Games, and she arrives with the kind of recent form that suggests she belongs at the top level rather than just making up the numbers.
Nacagilevu has travelled a similar road. She placed ninth on her senior world championships debut and broke the Junior Commonwealth Games snatch record at this year’s Oceania Championships, the sort of result that turns a promising junior into a genuine senior prospect. Theron and Patolo also secured their places off the back of the Oceania Championships in Samoa, the regional meet that has become the main proving ground for New Zealand lifters chasing selection.
Weightlifting New Zealand president Simon Kent summed up the mix when the team was confirmed. “We have athletes taking their first steps onto the Commonwealth Games stage, alongside experienced campaigners who have consistently performed at the highest level,” Kent said. It is the kind of blend a small national programme dreams about, an established medallist at the front and a wave of younger lifters learning what a major Games actually feels like.
The Games themselves run from 23 July to 2 August, a deliberately scaled-back edition after Glasgow stepped in to host when other options fell away. Weightlifting will be held at the SEC Centre over the opening weekend of the programme, on 25 and 26 July, which means the lifters will be among the first New Zealanders into action once the competition gets going. You can see the full weightlifting programme on the official Glasgow 2026 site.
For Liti, the timing matters. Heavyweight lifters do not get an endless number of cracks at a Games, and at this point every campaign could be his last. A third Commonwealth medal would put him on his own in the record books and cap a career that has already done more than most to keep weightlifting visible in New Zealand. He has spent years being the answer to the question of who New Zealand has in the sport, and Glasgow is a chance to hand that question over to the next group with a flourish.
That handover is really the story of this team. The veterans, Liti and McTaggart, are there for medals and for mentoring in equal measure, while the younger lifters are there to turn promising results at world and regional level into experience on a stage that counts. Whether any of them stand on a podium in Glasgow, the shape of the squad says New Zealand weightlifting has been quietly rebuilding its base, and a lot of that base is now made up of young women.
The selection was reported by RNZ, with further detail on the squad published by Scoop.
Will David Liti make history with a third Commonwealth Games medal, and which of the young lifters do you think breaks through in Glasgow? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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