Champions of 2025 – Weightlifter Mihaela Cambei
The best weightlifter of the moment in Romania won her first medal at a world championship in 2025.
Florin Orban, 23.10.2025, 13:45
Weightlifting has a long history in Romania. The first Olympic participation of the Romanian athletes was recorded in 1952, at the Olympic Games in Helsinki. However, over 30 years passed until the edition that brought the first medals for Romania and the first Olympic title – the one in Los Angeles, in 1984. Then, Petre Becheru, in the 82.5 kilograms category, and Nicu Vlad, in the 90 kilograms category, were gold medalists. At the same edition, the Romanian athletes also obtained five silver medals and one bronze. The latest Olympic medal of the Romanian weightlifters was brought from Paris, last year, by Mihaela Cambei – silver in the 49 kilogram category. This put an end to a 28-year period without medals, which lasted since the Atlanta edition in 1996, when Nicu Vlad took bronze in the 108 kilograms category.
This year, Mihaela Cambei also won her first gold medal at a world championship, in Førde, Norway. Since the category in which she won the medal in Paris, 49 kilograms, has little chances of remaining on the Olympic program in 2028, Mihaela moved up to the 53 kilograms category. In the Førde competition, in the snatch, she lifted 90 kilograms on her first attempt. She then missed an attempt at 93 kilograms, but braced herself and managed 94 kg on her third lift. Her main opponent, the Korean Hyon-Gyong Kang, was left with the 93 kilograms lifted on her second attempt, after failing her third attempt, when she wanted to lift 96 kilograms. The North Korean athlete, however, prevailed in the clean and jerk, with 121 kilograms, 7 more than Mihaela, and won gold also in the total, with 214 kilograms.
Mihaela Valentina Cambei was born in Dofteana commune, 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 Summer Youth Olympic Games, organized in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the senior category, in 2022, at the World Championships in Colombia, in Bogota, she won the silver medal in the 49 kilogram category, snatch style. Starting in 2023, she dominated the European Championships. Then, at the Paris Olympics last year, she obtained the only medal of Romanian weightlifters in the new millennium. (LS)
