Despite being one of Nigeria’s brightest and youngest sporting stars, Sarah Ovayioza Matthew has become a target for body-shamers.
The Nigerian weightlifter has been on the receiving end of ‘negative comments’ and unsolicited feedback on her muscular body.
“I hear a lot of negative comments, and see some people staring at me like I’m an alien walking on the streets,” she shared with Olympics.com in an interview.
“They comment on my muscles, my body and all that…But it doesn’t bother me.”
Matthew is the African champion in both weightlifting and arm wrestling. She has become accustomed to the sexist criticism since she began to harness her strength and stepped onto the weightlifting platform.
She is powering through stereotypes, determined to change the misconception that African women who lift weights are in the wrong place.
Nigeria has never won a weightlifting gold medal at the Olympics or the World Championships. But that streak could be in jeopardy with Matthew showing that she can be a future star.
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Discovering weightlifting as a sport
Just five years ago, Matthew was hopping around football fields and tatami mats in search of the sport that would work best for her. There were numerous athletic pursuits to pick from, ranging from wrestling to judo. But she had no idea what weightlifting was.
“I was introduced to other sports at the stadium gym by someone, and after I saw some guys lifting weights, I began to experiment with lifting weights. At that time, I didn’t even know weightlifting existed as a sport,” said Matthew.
“When I started weightlifting, I did research on the status of previous Nigerian athletes and whether there were any other female weightlifters. And there was a particular lady that caught my attention. Her name is Maryam Usman. She’s an Olympics bronze medallist.”
Inspired by her compatriot, a 2014 Commonwealth Games gold medallist who turned to weightlifting to combat bullying and harassment as a young girl, she immersed herself fully into strength training. The teenager had always had a vision for herself, and she had at last discovered what it was.
“I got really encouraged to pursue excellence in sports which is something I always wanted to do. Though when I started weightlifting it seemed very far from me at that point, especially in Nigeria that has a huge population. No matter how good you think you are or can be, there are already 100 other people greater than you. And that right there was my inspiration to train hard and be exceptional,” she said.
The more she lifted, the more effortless the weights felt. Her form improved tremendously, which led her to her involvement in an additional captivating sport, arm wrestling.
A sport that has been practiced by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans since ancient times; she was excited to test and show off her amazing arm strength in the arm wrestling arena.
The gripping sport has been gaining popularity in West Africa, and she saw it as a chance to strengthen her arms and upper body. It’s considered a game of endurance and technique. Competitors grapple locked hands with all their might, engaging their grip powers, core control and muscles.
When she competed for the first time in 2023 in Ghana, she used her strong upper body muscles well and won both the right and left arm wrestling titles for her weight class.
“I believe I was one of a very few athletes that didn’t lose any fights in both left and right arm in the arm wrestling event. I won all my fights,” noted Matthew.
“Some people kind of lose at one point and recover back at the finals or something…but I didn’t lose any of my fights.”
After competing in and winning an arm wrestling match, she felt confident and ready to find her footing on the weightlifting platform. She achieved success in the weightroom despite being at the infant stage of Olympic lifting.
In 2024, at the age of 18, she was chosen to compete in her first major international competition, the World Championships in Manama. Matthew’s lifts of 110kg in the snatch, and 135kg in clean and jerk earned her the bronze medal in the women’s 76kg, won by Song Kuk Hyang of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“It was a very big stage,” she recalled. “It was a lot of pressure. Nobody put pressure on me to win medals. They just wanted me to go out there and show myself that I have something to offer, but I wanted to win. It was a big deal for me, getting to my first World Championships, competing against these athletes that I used to see online and admired…In a way I was shocked with the bronze and it got a lot of people talking about how strong I was.”
From left to right: Miyareth Mendoza Carabali of Colombia, Kuk Hyang Song of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Sarah Ovayioza Matthew of Nigeria, pose on the podium of the Women 76Kg snatch during the 2024 IWF World Championships at the IWF Arena in Manama, Bahrain, December 12, 2024.
She had created a reputation for herself. Matthew returned to Lagos, but unfortunately, the global spotlight made her a target of criticism.
“Just check my social media and you will see so many negative comments. It’s a lot for a lady to deal with being a weightlifter in Africa. But I was ready for it when I got into weightlifting,” Matthew offered.
The teenage sensation is pushing back and flipping the script on her critics.
“The problem is that there are a lot of women who will not get into the sport because of the narrative that it affects your femininity and it’s just for men. All these factors affect the potential that weightlifting can really tap into Africa,” she reasoned.
The Okene, Central Nigeria, native is motivated to break down these barriers in her strength sport.
“We can create a more positive image about weightlifting for women in Africa,” said the gold medallist from last April’s African Championships.
“I want to make sure that the world will hear about us because we are strong women, but we hide our potential because of what society generally considers sports to be for women in Africa. Ultimately, I want my journey not to always be about winning medals but representing every girl who dreams big.”
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