Tim Swords Coaches in 300th Weightlifting Competition at 2025 VIRUS Weightlifting Finals
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by Preston Fekkes, Communications Lead
A staple of the weightlifting community for over 30 years, Tim Swords celebrated his 300th competition as a coach at the 2025 VIRUS Weightlifting Finals in Daytona Beach, Florida. Among the 300 events are the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games that both saw his athlete, Sarah Robles, earn the bronze medal. But even with a number of international success stories, Swords’ favorite weightlifting memories come from the kids he’s been able to help over the years.
Swords first became interested in weightlifting when he saw Olympian Joe Dube, the last American male to win a Senior World Championship in 1969, featured on a Strength & Health magazine in 1970.
“I took the book home and I read this thing three times, and my father said, ‘Gee, this kid's actually reading, so let's give him this Strength and Health magazine every month,’ which they did,” said Swords. “I was looking at the magazine and seeing how strong my brother was, and realizing my brother's not anywhere as strong as some of these guys. What does it take to be like these people?”
Swords went on to be a four-year letter-winner at East Carolina University in football, and signed multiple professional football contracts. After his playing days were over, Swords moved to Houston for work and began to teach the Olympic lifts.
“I finally learned how to do the proper stuff with weightlifting at about 35 and that was after 14 years of playing football,” Swords said. “It was a little bit late, but I figured that if this can help me, it can help anybody. It's now helped hundreds and hundreds of kids in the Houston area, and I'm real proud of that. That's one of the main reasons I'm still involved. It's nice to go to the Olympics and coach a couple of times, but if it were to come right down to it, I'm a lot happier about getting kids out of trouble or keeping them from doing something stupid to themselves, and trying to give back to the community.”
Beginning in the mid-90’s with the South Texas local weightlifting committee, Swords helped promote weightlifting in the Houston area to local high schools and strength coaches at the Houston Rockets. Since then, he has produced 64 national champions and 14 Pan American team members out of his weightlifting club, Team Houston.
In 2013, Swords became Sarah Robles’ coach, and the two would go on to make history together. Robles earned bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games to become the first American to medal at the Olympics since Tara Nott in 2000. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Robles earned her second bronze medal to become the first American to medal in multiple Olympic Games since Isaac Berger and Norbert Schemansky earned their third and fourth Olympic medals, respectively, in 1964. On top of the Olympic success, Swords and Robles were together for a gold sweep at the 2017 Senior World Championships and several Pan American medals.
“I'm really proud of Tim,” said Robles. “Tim's breadth of knowledge is really unique, and obviously he's a very good weightlifting and strength & conditioning coach. I know he's not dead, so this sounds dramatic, but I think he would want his memory and legacy to be how he helped make kids into good people. He wants the community to be better. He wants kids to be better and to love themselves. He'll tell you stories like, ‘Oh, I helped out ex-convicts and I helped a kid who had a club foot go from not being able to walk to playing football.’ They’re things that you hear every day at training that you don't hear in a lot of places. ‘Make sure to make your bed, hug and kiss your mom.’ He’s just encouraging us to all be good people and to look out for each other. He's like, ‘I don't even care if you ever win a local competition. If you can use sports as a way to become a good person, and you can get your grades and you can support yourself and your family, great. I did my job. I feel good about that.’”
Swords, even in the midst of Robles and his success at the international level, agreed that his favorite memories come from helping kids through weightlifting.
“When Sarah Robles won her first medal at the Rio Olympics, we were invited down to Copacabana Beach and the guy from Good Morning America wanted to interview me. He asked me, ‘Coach Swords, what's the most exciting part of your coaching career? Obviously, Sarah Robles has won the first medal for the United States in 16 years. I'm sure this is it.’ And I said, ‘Well, no, that's really not.’ I said the most exciting thing for me was about 10 years ago. We were at state championships in Texas, and I had a 10-year-old girl there. She was in the same class with three other women, and she wasn't going to win a medal. But one of the women bombed out – they didn't total. I didn't tell her she won a medal, but when they announced her, she ran to the podium crying her eyes out, and we put that medal around her neck. She was in tears and just crying from happiness. It's great that you have people go to a world event and win medals, but what's more priceless than that? Did the 10-year-old girl grow up to be a great weightlifter? No, she did not, but she grew up to be a registered nurse and raise two children of her own and be in a successful marriage.”
At the VIRUS Finals, Swords coached several athletes throughout the weekend, including 13-year-old Sidney Porter. In the U13 +65 kg category, Porter swept gold and set three new American records by lifting 100/125/225 on a 5-for-6 day.
“He's done a lot,” Robles said on Swords. “He deserves the recognition. It is one thing that he can do with his eyes closed, and he's going to do it until the wheels fall off and not many other people are going to do that. So, we all have to give credit where credit's due.”
“I got involved in weightlifting in 1979 and this is something I never planned on doing,” Swords said on reaching 300 competitions as a coach. “But as I went on and still continued to love the sport, I made this a goal for myself. So, I obviously feel pretty good about this. I've accomplished everything that I've wanted to accomplish in the sport, from the Olympic Games to the world championships, and this was the other one that I wanted to accomplish. So, I'm pretty pleased. I'm getting old and tired, but I'm still pretty pleased.”
