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IWF120y/110 – 2024: Emily Campbell (GBR) secures her place in the history books

Besides the strength displayed on the platform, Emily Campbell (GBR) is presently one of the most charismatic female lifters in the circuit. After seven Olympic medals, all won by men – ranging from the distant first edition of the Games, in 1896, until 1984 -, Campbell is the only female lifter from Great Britain on an Olympic podium. And she did it twice: in Tokyo 2020ne, competing in the +87kg category, she secured the silver in 122-161-283, and in Paris 2024, she was again among the best, clinching the bronze in the +81kg event (126-162-288, her best Total in international events). At the IWF World Championships, she has the exact same harvest – second in 2022 (122-165-287) and third in 2021 (121-157-278). “Weightlifting is very special and we should be so thankful that we have such beautiful people in our sport,” Campbell said after her world silver medal in Bogota, Colombia. On a continental level, her supremacy is complete in the +87kg category, with five consecutive European titles (2021 to 2025). Finally, she was also a Commonwealth Games champion in 2022 (after getting the bronze in 2018). Born in May 1994 in Nottingham, she graduated in 2016 with a Sports Science degree. In 2025, celebrating the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, she was again inspirational: “I want to be more than just an athlete. I would love to open my own gym for, predominately, youth and development. But I want anyone to be able to walk into my gym, to be able to have that community space to learn weightlifting, to learn physical literacy and to be comfortable and to live a healthy lifestyle”. Before Campbell, Louis Martin was the only British lifter with two medals in two editions of the Olympics – bronze in 1960 and silver in 1964.