European Weightlifting Championships, Day 1 Recap – Women’s 49 kg: Cambei’s Triumph Setting New Junior WR, while Imperio Bombs Out 

Today is the first day of the European Championships in Sofia. Two Women’s lightweight categories were competing to occupy the leading positions on the qualification list for the Olympic Games and defeat their rivals just before the last qualifying event in Thailand this spring.

The Olympic weight division, the Women’s 49-kg class, was supposed to be full of bright moments as several promising female lifters were competing today.

However, the performances resulted in how some athletes supposed it could be.

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New hopes were risen, old dreams and expectations were broken as the supposed leaders caught some luck, or failed their lifts at all. 

Let’s see what happened today: who succeeded in improving their personal bests, who preserved their prior results, and who lost their chances to raise their rating.

Top Athletes Review

We witnessed the competition between the 18 strongest female athletes in the 49-kg weight category. Let’s remind you of the most distinguished lifters who are listed in this weight class:

Cambei Mihaela Valentina, a Romanian weightlifter who won gold at the 2023 European Championships in Yerevan. She’s a bronze medalist at the 2023 World Championships in Riyadh, and a silver medalist at the Junior World Championships in Tashkent.

IMPERIO Giulia, an Italian weightlifter who got the gold medal at the 2022 European Championships in Tirana, won the silver medal at the 2023 European Championships in Yerevan, and is also a two-time gold medalist at the 2022 Mediterranean Games in Oran.

Nguyen Tham, a Vietnamese-born Irish weightlifter, is known for being the first Irish athlete to win a senior medal at the European Championships.

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Snatch

The performance in the Snatch exercise started from 67 kg.

6: Nguyen Tham – 74 kg
5: Drzazga Oliwia – 74 kg
4: ARMENGOU I CASTELL Sira – 74 kg

On this contest day, 48 % of all attempts were successful which is a below-average rate.

Top 3 Leaders’ Results

Now let’s analyze the Top 3 lifters’ performance:

🥉Bilicier Medine  – 74 kg
🥈Alici Duygu – 78 kg
🥇CAMBEI Mihaela Valentina – 90 kg

The bronze medalist of today’s competition became a Turkish lifter Bilicier Medine who failed to lift 74 kg on the first attempt. Then she repeated the weight and finally succeeded in lifting the 74-kg bar overhead. The third attempt was 77 kg which resulted in no-lift.

The second place was occupied by her teammate, Alici Duygu who performed 75 kg on the first attempt, the second try of 78 kg was poor. While her third attempt to lift 78 kg resulted in the silver medal.

The winner of the category became Cambei Mihaela from Romania: she lifted 85 kg on the first try successfully, then ordered a weight of 5 kilos more and coped with a 90-kg barbell. However, her last attempt of 93 kg was unsuccessful. So, the second try brought her the silver medal.

Clean & Jerk

The contest in the Clean & Jerk discipline started with a weight of _83_ kg.

6: ARMENGOU I CASTELL Sira – 90 kg
5:  Strzykala Mara – 92 kg
4:  Kovaleva Yuliia – 93 kg

51 % of all attempts in this exercise were successful which is a below-average rate.

Top 3 Leaders’ Results

Let’s describe the performance of the Top 3 lifters:

🥉Nguyen Tham – 95 kg
🥈Drzazga Oliwia – 96 kg
🥇Cambei Mihaela – 109 kg

Nguyen Tham from Ireland won Bronze in the Clean&Jerk exercise: she failed to lift 95 kg on the third attempt, then rehabilitated and managed to lift the same weight on the second try. The third attempt of 97 kg was unsuccessful again. Although, she secured the bronze medal.

Drzazga Oliwia from Poland took silver with the following results: 93 kg on the first try, 95 kg on the second try she failed, and 96 kg on the third attempt brought her second place.

The winner of the session became Cambei Mihaele who did all three good lifts: 100 kg on the first try, 105 kg – on the second attempt, and her final try of 109 kg resulted in gold.

Total results

• Cambei Mihaela – 199 kg
• DRZAZGA Oliwia – 170 kg
• NGUYEN Tham – 169 kg
• ARMENGOU I CASTELL Sira – 164 kg
• KOVALOVA Yuliia – 163 kg
• Strzykala Mara – 158 kg

Considering the total results, the bronze holder became a lifter from Ireland Nguyen Tham who did 169 kg in the sum of two exercises, falling behind the second place just by one kilo.

The second place moved to the athlete from Poland Drzazga Oliwia who did 170 kg in total.

The total leader of the two exercises was CAMBEI Mihaela Valentina who succeeded in lifting 199 kg overall, surpassing her rivals by 29 kg. 

Having watched the performance of the Women’s 49-kg weight category, we can conclude that today the majority of female athletes were out of their perfect form showing lots of red lights on the scoreboard.

Overall, 18 athletes were enlisted in the competitor’s list, however, 15 of them did all the lifts, while 3 lifters bombed out of the competition. Two lifters withdrew from the Snatch exercise and one in the Clean & Jerk session.

There were lots of red lights in both exercises, just several competitors managed to perform all third attempts. Another interesting fact: Italian athlete Giulia Imperio, who was supposed to be among the strongest lifters in the category, showed awful results today. She bombed out in the Snatch exercise failing to lift 83 kg.

It was a real sensation of the day, and as a result, she decided to reject performing in the Clean&Jerk session.

Keep watching tomorrow’s performances of three categories – Men’s 55-kg, Women’s 55-kg, and Olympic Men’s 61-kg weight divisions that will fight to outshine and get to the Top 3 in their weight classes.