Smith finds a silver lining after years of pain
Forgotten girl reaches podium after long struggle ‘I could not raise the empty bar at the start of the week’
There is a section on Zoe Smith’s Wikipedia page that lists her many weightlifting achievements in chronological order underneath the heading: Career highlights. It stops in 2014.
For the past four years, Smith has been a sporting nobody; a beacon of talent that faded into a foggy memory of seemingly unfulfilled promise.
Laid low by a nasty shoulder tear, Smith, 23, was forgotten to the outside world. Those who encountered her did so only at the smart central London cafe where she worked, in her words, “as a coffee wench”.
Every now and again a customer would recognise her as the young weightlifter who broke the British record at London 2012. “It’s interesting how differently people treat you when you’re the barista as opposed to the weightlifting Olympian,” she said.
Her barista days are over, although the funding struggles remain as real as ever and she now works part-time in a bubble tea shop after returning to school to belatedly complete her A-levels.
But on the East Coast of Australia yesterday, all of that was forgotten, for one afternoon at least.
Four years on from when she executed a perfect backflip to celebrate Commonwealth gold in Glasgow, Smith won silver at the same event in the women’s 63kg category. She now has the complete Commonwealth set, having won bronze as a 16-year-old at the Delhi Games in 2010.
There were no acrobatic celebrations this time around, not because she was any less happy – she suggested that her travails over the past few years made this silver more satisfying than the Glasgow gold – but because she was, in fact, struggling to move.
A back injury that flared up just before she left England gave her such grief that she was given medical clearance to ignore the Commonwealth Games’ “no needles” policy and have an epidural to numb the pain.
Even then she thought there was little hope of being able to compete, let alone lift 115kg above her head. “I could not lift the empty bar at the beginning of the week,” she said. “I had to take myself off to have a good old cry in the toilets a few times when everyone else was training and lifting big weights.
“Even on the bus here, I was thinking to myself, I’m going to go and say hello to everyone and have a wave on the platform, but I probably won’t be putting any weight on the bar. So I’m actually shocked. I don’t believe it.”
With the aid of pharmaceuticals and a hefty boost of natural adrenalin, she smashed her expectations.
With Canada’s eventual gold medallist Maude Charron a class apart from the outset, Smith soon found herself in an enthralling ding-dong battle with South Africa’s Mona Pretorius for silver in the Gold Coast.
As both women continued to pass weights, the pressure flip-flopped between them until Pretorius completed her final lift of 115kg in the clean and jerk. That left Smith needing to match the weight to claim silver after bettering the South African in the snatch section of the competition. With a heave, a smile and a punch of the air, she did just that.
It was all a far cry from the misery of the past few years. The torn shoulder suffered while competing at the 2015 British Championships ruled her out of the Rio Olympics and the entire national weightlifting set-up was subsequently stripped of all centralised funding.
With no prospect of public attention any time soon, Smith’s sponsors scarpered and a life of full-time training disappeared along with a daily delivery of free meals tailored to her specific calorific requirements.
She moved back in with her parents in London and took up a full-time job at a coffee shop working 8am until 6pm, while training in the evening in a gym that allowed her in for free in exchange for a few social-media posts.
Despite it all, she remained upbeat and, crucially, determined to return.
“I don’t think anyone’s really owed anything,” she said. “Funding was always a privilege and weightlifting being a minority sport has always been on the periphery of getting cut.
“Funding was a perk of the job and it made it a little bit easier but, for me, it has never been about the money.
“It has always been about my love of weightlifting. I’m going to carry on doing that, with or without funding.”
The last year has seen her implement significant changes. Training full time for the London Olympics meant moving to Leeds and ending her education early, so she has recently relocated to the Midlands and enrolled at Loughborough College to complete A-levels in biology, psychology and environmental science.
The continued need for money means she also works 10 hours a week at the bubble tea cafe in Loughborough University’s student union.
“I’m 23 and doing my A-levels, which is a bit weird,” she said. “I’ve got exams when I get back and, to be honest, I probably need to go and open a book and prepare. I thought to myself, how much older can I reasonably get and do my A-levels without it being too weird and I feel like this is probably about it.”
A mature student and, once again, a world-class weightlifter – it is time to update those career highlights.