In 2002 champion powerlifter Birchmans Pereira told a sports reporter at the Advocate that his dream was to share the winners’ podium with his grandson.

“I want to be on stage with my grandson, Brandon, nine years from now,” said Pereira back then.

At the time, Brandon Pereira was just seven.

As it turned out, the senior Pereira only had to wait six years for his dream to come true.

On May 24 this year, at the Global Powerlifting Committee’s Powerlifting Nationals held in Calgary, both Pereiras won gold in their respective events.

Brandon’s win came in the age 13-16 benchpress event with a 55.35 kg (123 pound) lift, and his grandfather’s gold was for the combined benchpress, squat and deadlift which added up to 585 kg (1,300 pounds).

“I wasn’t surprised,” says Birchmans Pereira, 62, commenting on his grandson’s success.

“He made it look so good and easy — that’s confidence.”

Brandon only started powerlifting last December, with his grandfather coaching.

Asked why he decided to take up the sport, Brandon smiles and answers: “I don’t know, years of asking me. He just convinced me to do it.”

Brandon is several centimetres taller than his compactly built grandfather, who stands 1.65 metres and weighs just under 82 kg.

Part of training involves eating well and living a healthy lifestyle.

Birchmans Pereira says he chows down on roughly $35-worth of food a day, all of which gets burned off as he trains and competes.

Since he came under his grandfather’s wing, and began training at a Red Deer gym three or four times a week, the younger Pereira says he feels good.

And strong, of course.

It turns out it’s very convenient when your dad’s dad is your trainer.

Brandon gets picked up after school on gym nights and delivered to his home after the training session.

Birchmans Pereira says its a good plan to do your training before you arrive home dead tired after a day at work or school, like he and his grandson do.

The reason they take days off between gym sessions is because the body needs time to recover, says Pereira.

The first thing an up-and-coming powerlifter needs to master is balance, says Pereira.

“Once Brandon got the balance, I put him into strength training.

“Now he’s deadlifting 275 pounds.”

Powerlifting differs from Olympic weightlifting in that it is all done in one movement, says Pereira.

The deadlift is just that, a lift straight up from the ground.

The other events in powerlifting are the benchpress and the squat.

Pereira said next time Brandon competes he will likely take part in the benchpress and also the combined squat and deadlift event.

“He’s hoping to win two golds,” says the ever-enthusiastic Pereira.

His involvement in the sport traces its roots to his youth as a keen high school athlete when he began lifting.

He was a track athlete, a Greco-Roman wrestler for a few years and was in karate for 11 years.

He segued into lifting weights to put some meat on his frame, competed in powerlifting for a few years then got into bodybuilding.

Pereira also competed in kick-boxing for a number of years.

But in recent years, he got back into weightlifting and powerlifting. In powerlifting he competes in the open category and in the masters 60-64 age category.

The sport isn’t without its dangers.

Right now he is sporting an enormous bruise covering 80 per cent of the inside of his left arm that relates to a rotator cuff injury, has a torn bicep on his left side and a torn pectoral muscle on his right side.

That’s OK, says Pereira, no big deal. All sports involve injury.

He’ll just do his best to train without complicating things so that he is as ready as he can be for his next big competition — the Global Powerlifting Committee’s World Championships to be held in Birmingham, England from Sept. 7-12.

It’s a pricey undertaking, what with travel and accommodation, he says, but he’s grateful for his sponsors.

The event will be Pereira’s third World’s.

He says he gets terrific support from his family, wife Viki, and sons Clinton (Brandon’s dad), and Travis, and their respective families.

They come out to all the events he competes in that are held in this area and often there are extended family members there, too.

As for the future, Pereira has his eye on Travis’s two-year-old son Matthew with a view to seeing him on the powerlifting medal podium some day.

And he has another goal.

Matthew’s dad, Pereira’s son Travis, trains though hasn’t yet competed.

“I am hoping to convince Travis to compete, then we would have three generations on stage,” says the irrepressible Pereira.

Contact Penny Caster at pcaster@reddeeradvocate.com.