Babybels and beef jerky fuel Campbell’s ambition
History-making weightlifter tells Katherine Lucas about her build-up to Paris Olympics
Emily Campbell was crouched on all fours screaming into a nearempty arena after becoming the first British woman in history to win an Olympic medal in weightlifting.
In Tokyo, Campbell won Team GB’s first medal in the sport since 1984, claiming silver in the +87 kilograms category.
Paris 2024 is an opportunity to turn that into gold, building on a stunning 2022 when she secured top prize in both the Commonwealth Games and European Championships, and silver at the worlds.
That will mean overcoming not only her own trepidations but the famous Chinese precision that has dominated the event. The nation’s recent record reads seven golds at Tokyo across men’s and women’s weightlifting, and five each in Rio de Janeiro, London and Beijing.
“This cycle has shown we’re starting to close the gap a little bit,” Campbell tells i. “Olivia Reeves, from the USA, dominated the Chinese and the North Koreans in the World Cup in Thailand just by making really sensible calls. She lifted out of her skin, six for six, the coaches picked the right calls, put the right weights on the bar and it forced the Chinese and North Koreans to compete with us.
“They’ve been so far ahead, they’ve been able to play their own game and pick their own weights. But now we’re getting closer ... and it’s not something they’re used to.
“Now we’re starting to get the confidence that if we put a little bit of pressure on them they’re not actually invincible. They’re not unbeatable. That’s the beauty of sport, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how great people are, you have to be able to perform on the day.
“We’ve had to compete our whole lives, so we’re good at that, those guys are not so good as that.”
The trajectory has been astonishing. Campbell lifted her first weights at 21, just six years before her Olympic silver. Athletics was her first love and she was at university in Leeds seeking out ways to increase her strength for the shot put and hammer. A coach soon recommended she enter a formal weightlifting competition and within 18 months, she had qualified for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast, where she earned bronze.
“I’ve never been scared to fail,” she adds. “I just think, ‘give it a crack, if it don’t work, it don’t work’. It’s not the end of the world.”
In fact, it was only after returning from Australia that she “started taking it seriously” – and that meant a stringent diet.
“Pre-training snack is some form of carbs – sweets, Lucozade, something along those lines – posttraining is protein and some carbs so maybe dried fruit, some chicken, a protein shake, even the little fruit roll-ups you put in kids’ lunchboxes.
“Dinner and lunch is a good combination of protein, some carbs and then loads of fruit and vegetables. Breakfast, probably I’d have two bagels, four eggs, four turkey and bacon, then make a smoothie. And then night time I have a bit of a treat.”
That nutrition programme is part of Team GB’s focus on the “one per cents”. In Paris, for the first time athletes will also be provided with Dreams sleep pods in the performance lodge to optimise their sleep, with sound proofing and ambient lighting.
That treatment has taken some getting used to. It has undoubtedly been a “whirlwind” and still Campbell says she prides herself on “trying to be the same person that I was” before Tokyo.
“I’ve got lots of family and friends that humble me very much and like to remind me where I came from,” she says. “My best friend’s daughter was about 12 just after the Olympics and we got a box at Manchester United and I took her there because that was her team.
“We got in the car on the way back and I said ‘did you have a really nice time?’ and she said ‘yeah it was amazing, thank you so much, but can you just answer me this one question? I’m really confused. They kept saying it’s an honour to have you here. Why were they saying that, because it’s just you?’
“And that just really reminded me that it doesn’t matter what you achieve, where you go in life, you are always just the same person that everyone knows you as. To her, you are still Emily.”
Campbell also receives regular messages telling her she has inspired people – particularly women – to take up weightlifting. She hopes to have at least one more Games in her in Los Angeles in 2028 but beyond that, she vows to open her own gym in Nottingham “getting kids into weightlifting from a younger age”.
The 30-year-old hopes the gym will promote “body awareness”, something she has already been doing through “one of the most unique sports on the planet”.
“We’ve got 4ft 11in girls who weigh 45 kilos right up to girls that weigh 150 kilos and are 6ft,” Campbell points out. “We are beautiful in the way that we represent every single shape of a woman and in the men’s we represent all the shapes and sizes men can come in.
“Sometimes people don’t understand why certain people look certain ways but they all weigh the same, because it just proves how different we are.
“Women in general, no matter what sport you’re in, our image is focused on a lot more than men’s images are. Everyone’s so bothered about what we look like or what we wear or how our hair is, did we do our make-up that day or has she got too much make-up on?
“Actually as an athlete, we don’t do the hair and make-up for everybody else, you do it for yourself because you want to go out there and feel empowered.
“The athletics girls always take great pride in the way they look and they always look gorgeous. That inspires some young women to think ‘I can look amazing and do amazing things at the same time’.
“That’s what we do in weightlifting as well, a lot of us girls are lucky in the fact we can have a little bit of a nail on us, we can have our hair done. It just boils down to the fact it’s every woman’s choice to do what they want to do and do what makes them feel amazing.”
Yet Campbell is ultimately unsure what to expect from Paris – not least in terms of medals.
“In weightlifting you never know on the day what people are capable of,” she says. “I just know I need to get myself in the best possible shape – so if the coaches put the numbers on the bar for a particular medal, I’m ready to go out there.”
Official Sleep Partner, Dreams, is supporting Team GB with investment in sleep for athletes in Paris.