Eileen Cikamatana

Eileen Cikamatana grew up in a small village in Fiji where she started weightlifting at the suggestion of a school teacher. The weightlifting prodigy helped her father carry around animal feeds on their farm in Levuka, a small village in Fiji. Her dad owned pigs and the then 11-year old Eileen would offload 50kg sacks of animal feed and other goods from his truck.

At 15, Eileen moved to New Caledonia to train with other top Pacific athletes. Eileen claimed a World Junior Championships bronze in 2016 and silver in 2017 for Fiji.

In 2018, Eileen claimed gold for Fiji in the 90kg weight division at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. A year later Eileen switched her allegiances from Fiji to Australia.

Eileen set her personal best in clean & jerk, lifting 155kg, in August 2019 and a snatch PB of 120kg and a total of 272kg in March 2021, an effort that would have won her the world title. She claimed gold at World Cup events in 2019 and 2020 for her new nation, breaking two junior world records in 2019 in China.

Eileen became the youngest member of Australia’s weightlifting team at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. There, she made light work of her competition with a snatch of 110kg and a clean & jerk of 145kg, bringing her combined total to 255kg, for a Commonwealth Games record. She became the first woman to win individual gold medals for two different countries at the Commonwealth Games when she won the women's 87kg event.

Eileen won the bronze medal in the women’s 81kg category at the IWF World Cup 2024 in Phuket, Thailand. There she fulfilled the final qualifying criteria to be eligible to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Entering the Olympics with her own medal aspirations, Eileen produced a snatch of 117kg and a clean & jerk of 145kg for a combined 262kg total. It landed her fourth place, 5kg from a podium finish.

Aiming to deliver her coach Paul Coffa an Olympic medal, Eileen lamented what could have been but recognised that everybody has to go through bad days at some point.

“It happens, that’s life," she said. "We have good days and we have bad days.”

“He (Paul) is a legend. He and his wife, nobody can replace them. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. He’s like a father to me."