First Madias Ngake lifted the weight of an upright piano to her shoulders. Then, with another staggering act of power and defiance, she sent a 128kg barbell high above her head.
And, just like that, the 34-year-old Team England weightlifter had won a silver medal and written one of the most remarkable stories of these Games.
Fourteen years ago, Ngake fled the London 2012 Olympic village after finishing sixth in her competition and ended up sleeping rough for a month.
The reason? She was competing for Cameroon, where homosexuality is illegal, and someone in the team had found out that she was a lesbian. And so began a journey that led to Ngake giving up elite sport for more than a decade, deciding to come back in 2023, and then transferring allegiances to Britain a year later.
“When I left the Olympics in 2012 I got on a bus,” she explained. “After the last stop, they told me this is closed, so I can’t go anywhere. So I decided I will sleep outside at the bus stop. I slept rough for about a month. Nobody looked after me.
“I had to leave because someone on the team knew about my situation, that I am a lesbian.”
But having won a European medal earlier this year, Ngake showed her strength as she led the women’s 87kg competition after the first event, the snatch, with a powerful lift of 108kg.
That put her 3kg clear of Australia’s Eileen Cikamatana. However in the clean and jerk, Cikamatana was able to thrust a barbell 140kg over her head like it was a rag doll to score a combined lift of 245kg – a new Games record – to take gold by 6kg.
But Ngake was not too disappointed afterwards. Asked if her life was like a movie, she replied: “Yes. And I never believed I would ever be here.”
Ngake’s hair was dyed red, the colour of her home country. Afterwards she said that it had been the idea of Emily Campbell, Team GB’s double Olympic medallist, who competes on Thursday.
Ngake also explained it was only after 2017 that she was legally able to work. She was an office cleaner in Leeds for nine years, earning about £2,000 a year. However she has recently moved to Nottingham to train as a full-time athlete and hopes to make the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
Amazingly, if she was to win an Olympic medal, it would be her second one. That’s because in 2019, she was awarded a bronze medal from London 2012 after three weightlifters who finished above her at the Games were disqualified for doping offences.
However, as the medal was sent to Cameroon, Ngake has never seen it as she has not been back to her home country.
“I would like to have it, yes,” she explained. “But I don’t think it’s going to be possible because the medal is in Cameroon and there is a situation and I don’t want to do politics.”
But Ngake knows how to do medals. And her adopted country were certainly delighted on Wednesday night.
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