Love took Jason Epton to rural North America. Weightlifting supported him when he came back.
The 24-year-old spent seven months “living in the a*** end of Canada” after his former partner elected to move back there to be closer to her family.
Having represented Team Scotland at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, it meant a second break from a discipline that had been such a key part of his life from a young age, after also taking time away following the death of his dad not long after competing in Birmingham.
Canada was a step out of his comfort zone, with Epton throwing himself into a new job to support himself financially and to expand his horizons in an unaccustomed setting.
“In September 2023 I moved to Canada and spent seven months out there,” he recalled. “My ex-partner was Canadian and was moving back. An opportunity presented itself for me to go over so I took it.
“I never did any lifting when I was out there. I was working as a car salesman over there in a dealership selling pick-up trucks. I was pretty good!
“It was something very new for me. I'd pretty much just been used to training. I'd done three years of roofing previously so going into an office-based job was certainly different and well outwith my comfort zone. But you just adapt and make it work for your job.
“I got back from Canada last April and just got straight back into it. I don’t work now, I just train. I do a wee bit of coaching at the club (Glasgow City barbell WLC) and I'm going into personal training too.
“The way I see it is I've got maybe 10 years at most at the top of the game so I'm never going to get that youthfulness and athleticism back in my later years.
“So I can establish myself in a workplace afterwards and the years beyond that. Everything's just in weightlifting now. That's my focus for the next 10 years.”
A year on from his return and the Glaswegian is already throwing himself into his preparations for next year’s Commonwealth Games.
Competing at the previous edition – where he finished 10th in the 81kg event – was a career highlight but it’s one he hopes can be topped by featuring in his home city in 15 months’ time.
“Obviously, being from Scotland, the Commonwealth Games is the pinnacle of competing for your homeland and being able to go to Birmingham, being so close to home and having the home support of family and friends was just incredible.
“Micky Yule, the para-lifter, was the flag bearer. I was right up the front beside him, absorbing everything in the opening ceremony. And then competition day was just incredible.
“I couldn't ask for a better experience, personally. But hopefully next year in Glasgow is going to be even better.”
The last time Glasgow hosted the Games, Epton was a schoolboy in the city’s East End. Having started out in weightlifting just a few years earlier, he remembers being mesmerised by the event and the atmosphere generated across the city and beyond.
“I was still at school then as I was only 14 at the time,” he adds. “But I remember it fondly. I went to watch Peter (Kirkbride)’s class. That home support - I've never seen anything like it at any event or any opening ceremony. The buzz around the whole city, the buzz in the competition environment, everything was incredible.
"I've never experienced anything like it. I was only maybe two and a half years into my weightlifting journey at that point but I've got a lot of fond memories of those days.”
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The following year Epton even got a shot as a dancing teacake, as featured in the 2014 opening ceremony.
“That was after Samoa at the Commonwealth Youth Games in 2015,” he laughs. “We had a wee do after it and those teacake things were lying about. I was like, ‘well, it would be rude not to’.”
These will be a slimmed-down Games next year with fewer events but Epton believes it will still capture the public’s imagination.
“With how short term it's been with the switch around, I think everybody's just getting a buzz for it. I feel like over the course of four years, it can almost come and go for some people. But over the space of a year or two, it's going to be there and it's going to stay. I think it's going to be class.”
