GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — At his first Commonwealth Games, Cyrille Tchatchet defected.
At his second, he won a silver medal.
“I’m very shocked and very happy,” Tchatchet said on Thursday after the weightlifting medal ceremony. “Being here now with a medal around my neck is magical.”
The first time he came to Glasgow for the 2014 Games, he fled from the Cameroon team. He spent two months homeless at the other end of Britain in Brighton on England’s south coast.
He was in detention for 18 months until his asylum application was granted in 2016. Weightlifting helped Tchatchet overcome depression and rebuild his life. He was the first U.K.-based athlete to compete for the Refugee Team at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Beside a degree in mental health nursing, he’s also a four-time British champion and a Commonwealth champion in 2023 for England. He retired from lifting the following year but quickly changed his mind when Glasgow stepped up as the replacement Games host.
“I just felt that maybe it was fate. Maybe it was meant to be,” he said. “It’s come full circle for me.”
His mother came from Cameroon for the first time to see him compete on Thursday in the men’s 110-kilogram division.
“I’ve been weightlifting since around 2010 and she’s watched me train but never compete,” the 30-year-old Tchatchet said. “Having her in the crowd was amazing, and I could hear her voice.”
He succeeded with all six lifts. He snatched 166 kilos and clean-and-jerked 208. His 374 total was four kilos lighter than the winner from Fiji.
Tchatchet said, “This medal means hope. It means perseverance. It means never giving up.”
The Associated Press
