IWF120y/70 – 2024: Solfrid Koanda (NOR) is the last one to know she won gold

It is certainly one of the funniest and most remembered images of the weightlifting competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games: in the women’s 81kg, Solfrid Koanda wins the gold for Norway, but always in her “bubble” and “protected” by her coaches regarding the progress of the event, she is finally informed that she was Olympic champion after the world and spectators on site had already understood the victory was hers. And what a triumph it was: after lifting 121kg in Snatch, she performs 154kg in the Clean & Jerk, for a total of 275kg. Her last failed C&J of 162kg was not even necessary to ensure the gold… With this success, Koanda, born in 1998, became the first female Norwegian lifter to win (and medal) at the Olympics, after a solitary achievement by her compatriot Leif Jenssen in Munich 1972 (gold in the men’s 82.5kg category). Besides the sportive performance, it was also a sweet revenge for a difficult life for Koanda, born to a Finnish mother and Ivorian father, but put into foster care during her teenage years. She starts weightlifting only in 2020, after practicing CrossFit, but very soon obtains excellent results at the international level. In 2021, she earns bronze at the IWF Worlds, before getting the gold a year later. Also with four European titles, the Olympic achievement definitively consecrates Koanda as a star in the world of weightlifting. A full-professional athlete since the end of 2022, she earned her life before as an electrician (she has a degree in electrotechnology).