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By the time Emily Campbell stepped on to the platform for a final time on Thursday, the women’s +86kg weightlifting final had all the fervour of a revivalist meeting.
Everyone was cheering. There were loud shouts and exhortations. People who didn’t know a snatch from a clean and jerk two hours before had become instant converts. It was the Campbell Effect in action again. But the double Olympic medallist wasn’t finished there.
“Emily is not satisfied with a gold medal,” said the announcer. “She’s not satisfied with a CWG [Commonwealth Games] record. She wants more!” The clean and jerk bar had been set to 160kg. But the army volunteers whose job it is to add more weights had barely moved, when the announcer piped up again. “Stop the clock! 163kg on the bar please loaders. Emily wants a Commonwealth record!”
Then the 32-year-old with three lions on her England shirt, and six lions woven into her dyed-red hair, went out and got it. One striking display of force and timing got the bar on her shoulders. Another got it over the head. Then the SEC erupted in a sea of love and appreciation.
Campbell responded by blowing kisses to her adoring fans. “I couldn’t have asked them to be any louder,” she said. “I couldn’t really hear myself think.”
But how she deserved it after lifting 115kg in the snatch and 163kg in the clean and jerk for a combined score of 278kg. That, incredibly, was 25kg clear of her nearest rival. As people waved St George flags and punched the air it was hard to imagine how she could be any more popular, but then she told us she would be appearing on Celebrity MasterChef next month.
“It was a really fun experience,” she said. “It was really nice for me to do something without being Emily the weightlifter. Food is something I’ve always been massively passionate about.
“MasterChef was definitely more nerve-racking than this, absolutely. MasterChef was very tough. It was a very tough competition, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. My signature dish is Caribbean and that’s all I’m going to give you because I want you to watch it.”
The only moment that gave us pause afterwards came when Campbell intimated she wasn’t entirely sure whether she would go for a hat-trick of Olympic medals at the LA Games in 2028.
“Do you want me to be dead honest with you?” she said. “It hurts everywhere. Everywhere. Your knees, your shoulders, your back, everywhere. We’re lifting serious weight and it is hard and that’s why you have to be really sensible.
“So I’ve got some thinking to do. We’re going to go back with the team. We’re going to strategise. LA, we would like to go, but we’ve got to look at the practicalities. If they work, you will see me start qualification at the end of the year. But for now, we enjoy what just happened. We have some good food, maybe a few drinks, and then we move on from that.”
As she spoke, the 18-year-old Etta Mae Love of Canada, who won bronze, was talking about how Britain’s finest lifter had been an inspiration when she first started.
That made Campbell smile, even if it also made her feel a little strange. “It is lovely now that I’m at a stage where I’ve become so old that I’m sharing the stage with people that were inspired by me,” she said. “But it’s always very surreal when people go – you’re a role model – because you never set out to do that.
“You just set out to do the thing that you love and you do it with grace. But if I can get someone to do something they’re passionate about, then I’ve done more than my job.”
And this, certainly, was another job impeccably done.
