Athlete of the Week – Mihaela Cambei
Romania has started the European Weightlifting Championships with three medals.
Florin Orban, 21.04.2026, 13:45
In Batumi, a city in Georgia located on the Black Sea, the European Weightlifting Championships are taking place until Sunday, April 26. Romania entered 15 athletes into the competitions, seven in the women’s events and eight in the men’s events. The Romanian athletes won medals from the very first day of the contest, April 19. Mihaela Valentina Cambei, an Olympic silver medalist in Paris, won one gold medal and two silver medals in the 53-kilogram category. The Romanian took the gold in the snatch event with 95 kilograms, and the silver in the clean and jerk with 114 kilograms and in the total event with 209 kilograms. For this performance, Radio Romania International has designated her the Athlete of the Week.
In Batumi, Mihaela competed, as she did in the latter part of last year, in the 53-kilogram category. In the snatch event, she entered the competition at 90 kilograms, missed her second attempt at 93 kilograms, but then lifted 95. She thus achieved a performance one kilogram superior to the one which, in October 2025, earned her the first gold medal at a world championship in Førde, Norway. In the clean and jerk, she lifted 114 kilograms, the same as at last year’s World Championships, but missed at 117 and remained in 2nd place, behind the Belgian Nina Sterckx, who won the event with 116 kilograms.
Mihaela Valentina Cambei was born in Dofteana, Bacău County (east), on November 18, 2002. In 2018, at just 16 years old, she won the bronze medal in the 48-kilogram category at the Youth Summer Olympic Games organized in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At senior level, in 2022, at the World Championships in Colombia, in Bogota, she won the silver medal in the 49-kilogram category, snatch style. Starting 2023, she dominated the European Championships. Then, at the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, she competed at 49 kilograms and obtained the only medal for Romanian weightlifting in the new millennium. As the category in which she was medaled in the French capital showed little chance of remaining in the Olympic program in 2028, Mihaela moved up to 53 kilograms, in which she also confirmed her status in 2025 with medals at the World Championships. (VP)
