Trish Tenn has been in and around sport nearly all her life.

The 62-year-old is a record-breaking weightlifter but she’s had a go at most things.

As a pupil at Bournside School she was a county champion runner at 800 metres.

She’s also done triathlon, played tennis and played netball for Cheltenham, and she knows what is required to be a good athlete because she did a degree in sports science in Nottingham.

Weightlifting, a sport she first came across in her early 20s, has always been the one at which she really excelled, particularly in the past couple of years as an over-60.

Her recent Masters titles and world records are all the more remarkable because she had a 27-year hiatus from the sport.

Mind you, she was pretty good in those early years too.

“I was in the Great Britain team,” said Trish, who is 5ft one-and-a-half. “I was in the 52 kilos class, I was about eight stone.

“We travelled all over Europe – Bulgaria, Greece, France, Spain; my best finish in the European Championships was sixth.”

Women’s weightlifting wasn’t an Olympic sport back then and in 1994 Trish took a break from it, a break that was to last the best part of three decades.

“I was still around sport, I’ve always been in the sports and fitness industry, but I just stepped away from weightlifting,” said Trish, who is married to Johnny, a former Great Britain trampolinist.

So what was it  that got her back into a sport in which she is now a three-time World Masters champion?

“When I was 58 I started going to Real Life Fitness gym in Cheltenham,” she said. “I was a bit out of shape, it took me a year to get into shape.

“But then some of the girls from the old Great Britain team told me about Masters weightlifting and I thought, ‘I’m going to compete again’.”

She met Charlie Stone, himself a Masters weightlifter who runs Stone Strength Weightlifting at Gym66 in Cheltenham.

“Charlie said, ‘Let’s see your technique’, and I found I could still do it,” said Trish. “The muscle memory was still there so I had a good head start.”

She certainly did, so much so that she has been winning trophies for fun in recent times.

“I won the British and European titles and then I won the world title in Florida,” she said. “It was amazing. I was in the over-60s competing in the under-55 kilos weight category which was only three kilos more than all those years ago.”

When Trish, who lives in Hatherley in Cheltenham, spoke to The Local Answer, she was preparing to compete in the British Championships before heading to Albania for the European Championships in April.

Those European Championships are particularly important to her because she is hoping to complete a clean sweep of Masters world records in her age group for the under-55 kilos category.

She already has the record for the snatch, and the total record – the combined scores for the clean and jerk and snatch – but she does not hold the clean and jerk record.

And it will be her last chance to claim the record because weightlifting’s powers-that-be are set to scrap the under-55 kilos category.

That will increase the pressure just a little bit on Trish, of course, but her record suggests that it will not worry her unduly.

“I love competition, I love competing, it’s so exciting,” she said. “Everyone is watching you on the platform, you only get three attempts so you don’t get many chances, you have to get everything right.”

And even if she doesn’t get everything right, she’s still a massive fan of the sport.

“It’s all about technique,” said Trish, who trains for two hours, four times a week. “I love technique, it’s all about perfecting your technique.

“I love the whole function of it, it’s a functional exam. You feel this power up the body – legs, back, arms; you have to be strong all over.”

And Trish, who runs 13 fitness classes in and around Cheltenham, says more women should take up the sport.

“It’s great for women,” she said. “It’s great for fitness and it’s a great body image to be strong, not bulky.”

Trish, who is mum to 20-year-old Jamie, a former Gloucester academy rugby player who is now very keen on volleyball, teaches exercise to older people and she continued: “They are strength and balance classes, it’s so important for older people to keep strong.”

Julie Goodfellow, who is chairman of Cheltenham Heart to Heart, an exercise and support group affiliated with the British Heart Foundation, is certainly a big fan.

“She is my fitness instructor at the heart classes I attend,” she said. “She is a real inspiration to her classes.”

That’s a perfect Tenn then!