‘Boys can be big but for girls it’s “you ate too many burgers!”‘: Team GB weightlifter EMILY CAMPBELL on tackling the trolls, her dreams of winning Olympic gold in Paris and wanting to leave a legacy

As Emily Campbell sits in the dank changing room at her no-frills gym on an Alfreton industrial estate, she allows her mind to wander to a rather more glamorous world.

‘I would love to be on Strictly Come Dancing,’ the Olympic weightlifting silver medallist tells Mail Sport. ‘I like that it’s something you have got to train hard for, something that is going to humble the hell out of you.

‘But it’s a bit of glitz and glam – and I love glitz and glam. Getting dressed up in nice dresses. That would be amazing.’

As luck would have it, Campbell has just been putting on a nice dress for a special Mail Sport photoshoot in which she dances in the middle of the Atlas Workout Warehouse, five coloured weights by her feet resembling the Olympic rings.

The 29-year-old is also sporting dark red hair. At Tokyo 2020, she had it dyed a Team GB-themed red and blue and tied into two buns. As for Paris this summer?

‘Everyone keeps asking and I am feeling the pressure!’ she laughs. ‘But I will pull something extraordinary out of the bag, I promise.

‘I have some ideas up my sleeve. It might include glitter and sequins.’

It turns out there was a good reason that global hair colouring brand Schwarzkopf signed Campbell as an ambassador. That was just one of several commercial deals to have come her way since she became the first British female weightlifter to win a medal at the Olympics three years ago.

‘That changed my life from the outset,’ admits Campbell. ‘I went from a girl who was never recognised, and nobody even knew what I did, to walking down the street and people knowing exactly who I am.

‘I have done some pretty cool things since Tokyo. Things that I wouldn’t have ever imagined. I did Blue Peter. I did a Google ad. I got invited to the GQ Awards where Vivienne Westwood, Keanu Reeves and Stormzy were all sat in the room.

‘I am more than grateful for everything that I have been involved in. But I am still the same Emily Campbell that grew up in Bulwell.’

Campbell had a humble upbringing on the Snape Wood estate in that Nottinghamshire town, where she lived with her decorator father Trevor, her mother Lynda and her younger sister Kelsie, an international swimmer for Jamaica.

‘It was nice to be in a real city surrounded by real things,’ says Campbell, whose dad later comes to see her in the gym.

‘It gave me determination and motivation to work hard and make the best life that I could for myself. But I had amazing parents who gave me opportunity after opportunity – and I was very good at trying to seize them.’

Campbell only started weightlifting while at Leeds Beckett University in 2016 to improve her strength as a promising shot putter. As such, she did not receive funding when she began her Tokyo campaign.

Instead, she had to raise £10,000 just to get to Olympic qualifying competitions, so she worked full-time and called in a few favours.

‘I lived at home and the bank of mum and dad was a huge help,’ recalls Campbell, whose life is easier now she is a National Lottery-funded athlete.

‘I also reached out to the local community and a lot of them helped me. I got a lot of support from the local Bulwell Market who gave me free fruit and veg and would fix my boots.

‘I worked full-time in a school for children with behavioural needs, then on reception at the sport and injury clinic at the University of Nottingham. I just did anything I could to pay for training and competitions.’

Eventually, Campbell received a small grant from British Weight Lifting to aid her Olympic bid, which was called ‘black girl money’ by a jealous team-mate.

‘Unfortunately, one of my team-mates felt she deserved the money instead of me,’ says Campbell. ‘A nasty comment was made but that’s just life.’

Has she experienced any other racist comments? ‘Yeah, lots of them have been sly and indirect,’ she admits. ‘Unfortunately, we still live in a society where some people’s views don’t align with everyone else’s.

‘That’s why I try to work really hard to inspire young people of colour to achieve what they want to achieve.’

And she has faced other barriers, too.

‘Brands have been put off me because I am a bigger size,’ she says. 

‘There are certain images brands want to portray and if you don’t fit into that box then it doesn’t work for them. You do get your trolls that write comments.

‘There is a lot of stigma in weightlifting. The boys are allowed to be big and they are really impressive and everybody thinks it’s amazing. But with the girls, it’s, “They are fat and out of shape and look like they ate too many burgers”.

‘I am a super heavyweight girl, but I am this size for performance. I am 19st 9lb, but I was 14st 13lb when I started the sport and I wasn’t moving enough mass to compete against the best girls in the world.

‘I want to leave a legacy and I want to show people that you can be proud of whoever you are, even if you don’t look like what society says you should look like. There are not many athletes who have been plus-size and a person of colour. Everything is about representation. You can’t be what you can’t see.’

Campbell, who has to consume around 3,300 calories a day, has long been frustrated that plus-size sports clothes are not more readily available for women. However, she believes she is in a position to make a change having become the first weightlifter to be sponsored by Nike.

‘They said they are happy for me to be in the conversation about what plus-size girls would like to wear,’ she says. ‘It is nice to know your voice is being heard in such a massive corporation.

‘You never know, you might just see an Emily Campbell range with Nike.’

As well as her own clothing range, Campbell has ambitions to open a weightlifting gym. First, though, there is the small matter of trying to turn her Tokyo silver into gold in Paris this summer, which would mean beating China’s formidable Olympic and world champion, Li Wenwen.

‘It is going to be a hard one,’ says Campbell. ‘She has been one of the most dominant weightlifters for a while. But anything can happen on the day.’

Campbell snatched 122kg (19st 3lb) in Tokyo and then lifted 161kg (25st 5lb) in the clean and jerk, to give her a combined weight of 283kg (44st 8lb), far behind Li’s 320kg (50st 5lb).

A year later, she won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham with a personal best total of 286kg (45st).

‘I have definitely got some more up my sleeve,’ adds Campbell, who claimed her fourth successive European title in February in Sofia.

‘I can definitely promise bigger weights in Paris. My ultimate goal is to win an Olympic gold medal.’ 

That as well as another shiny prize – the Strictly glitterball trophy.