TAMPA, Fla. — A Pinellas County woman, with dreams of making it to the Olympics for weightlifting, is heading to Qatar representing the United States.

Alexia Gonzalez will compete on Dec. 11 in the Grand Prix II against countries across the world.

The training it takes to make it to the big event starts every day at her home gym. She starts with stretching.

“This is kind of the necessary stuff that I do here at home to help me make sure that when I get to the gym, I’m already primed,” she said.

That’s just phase one in her daily training to compete in the Olympics.

“I’ve always known I wanted to represent the United States,” she said.

She spent years competing in gymnastics and diving that helped pay her way through college, but she’s not competing in either of those sports. She chose weightlifting instead.

“I really loved Olympic weightlifting because it’s an Olympic sport,” she said. “I’ve always been aligned with the Olympic sports; with like gymnastics, diving, so weightlifting just kinda fell in my wheelhouse.”

She said her journey started four years ago in CrossFit and it eventually led her to learning all there is to know about weightlifting.

“So Olympic lifting has two lifts,” she said. The snatch, which I’m training now, and then the clean and jerk. Most people are familiar with that where you clean it and then jerk it over your head.”

She lifts 220 pounds in one lift and 264 pounds in another. She said becoming a world-class athlete was her dream ever since she was a little girl.

“Ironically, at the hospital I was watching the 2008 Olympics, and I was laying in the hospital bed watching the opening ceremony and I told my mom, I said ‘Mom, I want to be on that level one day.’ So that dream has been alive in me since I was a little girl,” she said.

Gonzalez was recovering from a serious surgery when she was young.

“When I was 12 years old, I had heart surgery. So that was just one moment in my life where there were some challenges and obstacles. Fortunately, we caught the condition very young, and I was able to overcome that,” she said.

That’s what her story is about — overcoming and uplifting with weightlifting.

“I have such a passion for little girls. I’m the oldest of four girls and I want girls and boys to know you can do hard things if you put your mind to it,” she said.

Gonzalez is hoping to get noticed on the international stage. She said it also gets her steps closer to compete in the 2028 Olympics. Because she’s so early in her career, she’s paying out of pocket and getting donations from the community to lighten the load.

“So the competition in Qatar is self-funded. I am not on stipend yet with USA weightlifting. So, I have set up a gofundme page to help raise the money. Along with, we’ll be selling shirts here in the next week,” Gonzalez said. “The flight alone to Qatar is over $2,000 along with having to pay for entry fees, hotels, miscellaneous. So I’m doing some fundraising efforts to help get me over there.”

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