Eileen Cikamatana (weightlifting) became the first woman to win individual gold medals for two different countries at the Commonwealth Games when she won the 87kg weight division in Birmingham. Four years earlier, she claimed gold for Fiji in the 90kg at the Gold Coast Games. Cikamatana, who was the youngest member of Australia’s weightlifting team in Birmingham, made light work of her competition with a snatch of 110kg and a clean & jerk of 145kg to bring her combined total to 255kg, all Games records. Eileen grew up in a small village in Fiji and started weightlifting on the suggestion of a school teacher, moving to New Caledonia to train with other top Pacific athletes when she was 15. She claimed world junior championships bronze (2016) and silver (2017) for her homeland before a dispute with the governing body saw her switch allegiances to Australia. She claimed gold at World Cup events in 2019 and 2020 for her new nation, breaking two junior world records in 2019 in China, but was still ineligible to represent Australia at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Cikamatana is coached by Paul Coffa at the Oceania Weightlifting Institute in Noumea, although she makes frequent trips to Sydney. She set her PB in clean & jerk (155kg) in August 2019 and her snatch PB (120kg) and total (272kg) in March 2021, an effort that would have won her the world title.