Tokyo Olympics: Emily Campbell becomes first British female weightlifter to win Olympic medal
Emily Campbell #EmilyCampbell
Dates: 23 July-8 August Time in Tokyo: BST +8 Coverage: Watch live on BBC TV, BBC iPlayer, BBC Red Button and online; Listen on BBC Radio 5 Live, Sports Extra and Sounds; live text and video clips on BBC Sport website and app.
Emily Campbell became the first British female weightlifter to win an Olympic medal with +87kg silver.
The 27-year-old lifted a total of 283kg as China’s Li Wenwen won gold with a new Olympic record of 320kg.
Campbell, 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.
American Sarah Robles won bronze with a total of 282kg.
“I am speechless, for the first time ever,” Campbell told BBC Sport.
“You know you can get in shape coming into these things, you know you want to perform your best, but to actually put it out on the stage, I’m really thrilled.”
She added: “You can achieve anything you want to achieve. I picked up a barbell five years ago for the first time and now I am an Olympic silver medallist.”
Earlier in the competition, transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard failed to record a successful lift.
The New Zealander became the first openly transgender athlete to compete at an Olympics in a different gender category to the one in which they were born.
Campbell’s total set new British and Commonwealth records and was Great Britain’s first Olympic weightlifting medal since 1984.
She won European gold in April, three years after winning bronze at the Commonwealth Games.
Before the Tokyo Olympics, she told BBC Sport that a big part of her motivation was “to prove that women who look like me can have successful careers in sport”.
Since her Commonwealth bronze, Nottingham-born Campbell said she had been approached by multiple sponsors who subsequently pulled out because of her clothing size.
She is trying to make an impact in the world of women’s fashion by changing the perception around clothing sizes, and has contacted sports brands to try to get them to produce clothing for women with fuller figures.
