‘Chills everywhere’
CHARRON GOES FROM CIRCUS ACROBATICS TO OLYMPIC GOLD IN WEIGHTLIFTING
Maude Charron spent three years at circus school, training to be a high-flying acrobat before injuries left her looking for another pursuit.
On Tuesday, she soared to heights of another sort — the top of an Olympic podium.
The 28-year-old from Rimouski, Que., won gold in the 64 kg division in women’s weightlifting, the latest among Canada’s wonderwomen at Tokyo 2020.
“In circus, it’s all about the show. You’re the only one in the stand and you have to entertain the crowd,” Charron said.
“Kind of the same thing here, because I’m alone on the stage, and I have to entertain the crowd.”
She might have been standing alone in the spotlight at Tokyo International Forum, but she was insistent this medal isn’t just for her.
It’s for her loved ones. During the pandemic, her father cleared space in his garage so this aspiring police officer could bring her weights home.
It’s for the coach who discovered her, and for the coach who is now helping her to reach her powerhouse potential.
It’s for Christine Girard. While Charron is the second female weightlifter to win Olympic gold for Canada, she is the first to stand on that top step, to experience the immediate fame and fuss.
Girard finished third on her competition day at London 2012 before reanalysis years later of urine tests revealed the two rivals who topped the heap had been doping. She finally received her reallocated gold in 2018, but she didn’t get ... this.
“It’s a medal for Canada. It’s a medal for weightlifting in Canada that was due to us since Christine Girard and all the story behind it,” Charron said. “I was just so proud about what I achieved here, what I’ve been through — my coach and I — during the last couple of years, the pandemic.
“Everything of the last few years, it all went through ... ”
She finished that thought with her hands, gesturing that tears were pouring from her eyes during the medal ceremony.
“Just hearing the anthem with the rings and stuff, it’s chills everywhere.”
When this five-foot-one dynamo initially dreamt these dreams, she wasn’t imagining she would be hoisting more than double her body weight over her head.
Charron was first an upand-coming gymnast, competing at a national level.
“(It’s) the best sport to get the basics — it has balance, strength, everything,” she said. “Also, I learned there how to deal with stress.”
She enrolled next at the Quebec Circus School in Quebec City. When injuries struck, she found Crossfit.
“That’s where I learned my strength,” Charron said. “I’d never really trained that aspect of my physical abilities, but that’s where I learned I was pretty strong.”
That’s also where she was spotted by her first weightlifting coach, Serge Chretien, who suggested she give the sport a try.
Sure, why not? “There’s nobody like her,” said Charron’s current coach, Jean-patrick Millette. “Any sport she picks, she’s going to do this. That’s what I feel like.”
There’s a ton of strategy and gamesmanship in weightlifting.
Millette described it as “a poker game” and during Tuesday’s final, it always seemed that Charron had an insurmountable stack of chips.
If there was ever any doubt that she’d leave with gold, it lasted for all of two minutes.
Charron, the defending champion at both the Commonwealth Games and Pan American Championships, hoisted 105 kg in the snatch technique, giving herself a slight but not insignificant lead at the midway point of the session.
She started at 128 kg in the clean-and-jerk but rocked back on that first attempt, looking like she might faint as she abandoned that effort. She had 120 seconds to return to try that same weight again. And? She aced it. Charron raised three more kilos for her final lift, boosting her combined total to 236 kg.
Italy’s Giorgia Bordignon was a surprise for silver at 232 kg, while Chen Wenhuei of Chinese Taipei rounded out the podium at 230 kg.
Charron’s triumph Tuesday marks Canada’s eighth medal at Tokyo 2020, all from female athletes.