Instead of bench pressing the weight of your average fully grown black bear, Sumeet Sharma has been lifting the spirits of frontline workers.
Sharma, a competitive powerlifter with several gold and silver medal finishes earned over his career already, was set to compete in the European Junior Powerlifting Championships last May until the coronavirus (COVID-19) dashed those plans. As the pandemic spread and put increasing pressure on frontline workers, Sharma would switch out lifting disks of iron for crates of water bottles and boxes full of food to donate to nurses across the Lower Mainland.
“I have a lot of family members and friends who work in hospitals, just hearing their stories about how healthcare workers working extremely hard during this pandemic really inspired me, my family, and my sponsors to give back to the healthcare workers,” Sharma wrote in an email to Vancouver Is Awesome.