It was a brilliant bronze for Emily (Campbell) in Paris on the closing day of the 2024 Olympic Games, as the +81kg category lifter hit a lifetime best to get to the podium.
Campbell’s bronze finished the Great British medal haul in style, taking the GB tally to 65 – one more than in Tokyo. In doing so, she became the first British weightlifter to win two Olympic medals in more than half a century, having taken a silver three years ago.
“It’s absolutely incredible, we’ve had a fantastic Games and I’m sure everybody is really, really happy,” Campbell said after the competition. “The field was tough today, the level compared to Tokyo was so much higher. I knew I had to bring out the big guns today and I’m just so happy.”
On a day that showcased the best of this gripping and highly strategic Olympic sport at the South Paris Arena, a domineering performance from Li Wenwen of China gave her a lifting total of 309kg, and a second consecutive Olympic gold medal. Korea’s Park Hye-jeong took silver with 299kg and Campbell lifted a career-best combined total of 288kg to take bronze.
Her hair braided with red, white and blue and up in buns, accessorised with a set of fabric Olympic rings hanging at the back, Campbell celebrated her medal by doing a cartwheel across the weightlifting floor. She drily observed later that it was “the best cartwheel you’ve ever seen in your life”, and had been a gift to her coach.
Campbell is not just the only woman in Great Britain to have won a medal in weightlifting, here in Paris she was the only super-heavyweight female athlete from Europe to qualify. China have now won the last four gold medals in this weight class, underlining the country’s dominance.
“I was the sole representative for GB, I was the only weightlifter, so I had to bring back something special. My Tokyo medal has got a friend now,” the 30-year-old said.
In front of a rambunctious crowd peppered with union jacks, Campbell pulled out one of the performances of her career in front of her friends and family, who she described as “absolutely nuts”. Winning a medal in front of them was “special”, she said. “We’ve achieved the goal that we set out to do, which was a medal in Paris, and I just got a bonus one along the way.”
Opening on the snatch – where a competitor lifts the weighted bar above their head in a continuous motion – Campbell stepped on to the stage, gave herself a “you’ve got this” nod, and breathed slowly out while pushing her hands in a downward motion. The snatch is generally seen as her weaker lift, yet she raised 119kg then 123kg, before surpassing the previous 124kg personal best she set in the 2022 Commonwealth Games, with a lift of 126kg.
With Li, whose nickname is Big Baby, in such imperious form, it was always likely to be a battle for silver in this competition and by the end of the first three snatch lifts – the midway point of the competition – Park had lifted 131kg to Campbell’s 126kg. Li, already in front with 136kg, sat out her third lift.
While weightlifting is a fundamentally simple sport – as the soft-voiced explainer noted at the start of the competition “the person who lifts the heaviest weight is the winner” – behind the scenes it is as strategic as chess. Before the restart coaches could be seen on screen going to the table, with rapid-fire changes to the weights their lifters were going to attempt, as calculations were made about what would be required to get a medal.
For the clean and jerk, Campbell’s team raised her initial attempt weight to 162kg in a bid to hunt down Park. Campbell – who has previously described how she often doesn’t know what weight her team have decided she will attempt to lift – made it with as much ease as it is possible to have, while holding significantly more than your own body weight above your head. But there was a lack of power for her second attempt and she missed 169kg, 4kg above her personal best.
Knowing Park – who had already made 168kg – was attempting 173kg in her last lift Campbell’s team went for a moonshot, putting 174kg on the bar – a massive nine kilograms more than her previous lifetime best. But it wasn’t to be, the silver was Park’s and it was bronze for the British athlete.
Li who lifted 167kg then 173kg – apparently without breaking sweat – declined to take her last lift, instead picking up her diminutive coach and carrying him across the stage in celebration.
The next challenge for Campbell may require some different skills to the power and precision she showed at the South Paris arena. Asked what she wanted to do next, she said: “If Strictly [Come Dancing] want me, I wouldn’t say no. But obviously, I’ll just enjoy tonight.”
