Tokyo 2020: Emily Campbell becomes first British female weightlifter to win Olympic medal

Emily Campbell landed the first women’s Olympic weightlifting medal for Great Britain with silver in the +87kg category.

Campbell, who finished with a total of 283kg, lost out to China’s Li Wenwen, who set a new Olympic record of 320kg to secure the gold. The USA’s Sarah Robles lifted a total of 282kg to take the bronze.

The British weightlifter, making her Olympic debut in Tokyo, was fourth after the snatch but moved on to the podium with successive clean and jerk lifts of 156kg and 161kg.

Campbell was momentarily in the gold medal position after lifting 157kg in the clean and jerk, but the pre-tournament favourite Li then cleanly lifted 173kg. She then went onto lift a mammoth 180kg to emphatically take home the title. When Robles was denied on 157kg, Campbell improved her medal colour once more by lifting 161kg.

This is the first Olympic medal for a British female weightlifter & the first medal for Team GB weightlifting since 1984. She also set a new British record in the clean and jerk section of the event, as well as her total score.

The event was surrounded by some controversy due to the presence of Laurel Hubbard, the first openly transgender athlete to compete at an Olympics in a different gender category to the one in which they were born.

However, in the snatch stage, the New Zealander failed to record a successful lift at 120kg, and twice at 125kg, and so failed to progress further into the competition.