USA's bronze-medal lifter Sarah Robles: On strength and the right tool for the right job 

Sarah Robles’ job is to put up huge weight.

“Look at it this way, I like to tell people there’s the right tool for the right job, so if you get your car stuck in a ditch you’re not going to call bicycle, or a Prius,” said Robles, whose bronze in Rio in 2016 broke a 16-year American medal drought in Olympic weightlifting. “You’re going to call a tow truck, because the tow truck will pull a lot of weight. It’s going to haul it right off.”

Robles is a large woman, weighing in at 140kg (309lb) and measuring 1.79m tall. She’s full of life and power and enthusiasm for her sport, where she competes in the heaviest category of women’s Olympic weightlifting (+87kg). It’s an arena where you’re either strong enough to handle the massive weight required, or you’re not.

No amount of discussion, or clever cajoling, will work you around that reality.

“I think strength is a lot of things,” added Robles, who began her weightlifting from a background in the track and field events, where the biggest and strongest throw the shot put. She became a top-ranked high-school thrower in her native California and earned collegiate scholarships before turning her attention, exclusively, to weightlifting.

Her power and determination marked her out on an Olympic path early in the process.

“I suppose people on the street might see me and think I’m one of the 60 per cent of Americans who are overweight or obese, or whatever,” said Robles, now 32 and a two-time Olympic medallist after winning bronze in the +87kg event here in Japan. “But they have no idea about my athletic prowess.”

Power and glory…and bumps in the road

It’s a prowess beyond question. Robles won silver at the 2010 Pan American Games and is a three-time national champion. She owns the American record in the +87 kg clean and jerk and is desperate to match it with a record in the snatch, safely untouched since 2003 when Cheryl Haworth lifted 128kg in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “It keeps me up at night,” Robles laughed “Wakes me in a cold sweat.”

It hasn't been an easy road for Robles, who's now been to three editions of the Games, to even get herself into the Olympia arena.

“If this sport hasn’t given you a reason to quit, well you haven’t been doing it long enough,” said Robles, who grew up in the Coachella Valley of California with a father who was unable to communicate after a stroke, and a mother who had to pick up the slack and carry a heavy load.

Leading up to her Olympic debut in London in 2012, where she finished sixth, Robles was barely scraping by. Social media was only just getting its legs as a way for athletes to make money and sponsors, in niche sports like weightlifting, were few and far between for Robles in the run-up to her debut Games. “$400 a month,” she said, when asked how much money she was pulling in before London.

“I remember standing on line at the food bank [on public assistance] and getting kicked out of one place [where she was staying] and having to find another place. It was pretty chaotic and stressful,” said Robles, who’s outspoken about the difficulties of scoring lucrative sponsorships with her body type and not fitting into what she calls "some cultural norm”.

“I lived on the floor in the guitar room at my friend’s house," said Robles. "I had no place else to go, so it made sense to me. But if you don’t go through the struggles you can’t really appreciate the journey, right? Something has a greater significance in your life when you have to fight harder for it."

But Rio 2016 always shone like a beacon through a raging sea and Robles, making a promise to her former coach, took dead aim at that goal on the horizon. She stumbled at the U.S. Trials, but eventually made Team USA – and history with it.

History made on the Rio mat

“Of course you want to medal, obviously, but my third clean and jerk, when I put the weight down, I’m not thinking about history – I’m not going through these weird stats of how long its been since an American medalled,” she said, her face lit up with the memories of that moment at the Riocentro. “I was just thinking about doing my best. I’m thinking about how long it’s been and being able to get to that point, it all flooded into me. Even if it didn’t get a medal, that excitement, that pure elation, would have been the same."

But she got the medal. She didn’t find out on the mat, where she pounded the padding with her hands in jubilation, the huge weight she’d lifted (160kg) still bouncing in front of her. It was back away from the cameras and the flash bulbs, when an opponent failed to lift her weight, that the reality hit Robles.

“She’s a genetically gifted person and has always fought an uphill battle,” said Robles’ coach Tim Swords, someone she says understands, as a former American football player (gridiron) “the demands of a larger body". “She’s always fighting stereotypes.”

The relationship between these two, Robles and her coach, is critical to her success and her bouncing back in 2016 with her greatest achievement yet. “You have to really trust your coach in this sport,” she said of Swords, whose garage gym near Galveston, Texas is where she kept up her training through the year of COVID uncertainty. “If they tell you they think you can do it [a certain weight], you have to be able to trust that.”

Robles can’t control the smile on her face when she remembers that moment of victory in Rio. “I’m proud I got to be in that moment. I come from a very humble background and I had to crawl my way up from the very bottom of the sport,” she admitted before going on make further history with her bronze in Tokyo. “When I hear about the U.S. medal count, “I was part of that. I was one of those. I wasn’t sitting at home with a bowl of chips on my chest, saying ‘Go USA!’ It’s so frickin’ cool!”

When asked where the road ends, the two-time medallist breaks into laughter. She knows there’s an end, but still there’s that voice in the back of her head whispering American snatch record. “I just kind of keep going,” she said, trying to control her chucking. “I like to be an intact human being, so there’s an end somewhere, but I still haven’t accomplished everything yet.”

Robles was the most senior woman of the eight-athlete American weightlifting team at the Tokyo Games. Having been through it all – the wringer and the highs – she embraced her role as a team leader.

Individual sport – team leader

“From my track and field background, I know what it’s like to be in a team and to give some of my attention and support to teammates,” she said. “That’s the kind of camaraderie I want and anywhere you go with that USA on your chest, that’s what comes first.”

Winning, putting down the weight, being the best – these things are on Robles’ mind all the time. But there’s lot of ways to win. Same as the myriad ways one can be strong. And from the looks of it, she’s doing her fair share of winning every day.

“The thing that makes me feel really good, that confirms what I’m doing this for, is the messages I get from young girls, saying ‘I want to be like you when I grow up’,” Robles added in a quiet voice. “Them telling me that they went to the gym for the first time because of me, or their moms saying they’re so happy they have a role model like me to look up to.”

Robles knows the weight of her tasks - whether on the mat or off. And she's who is willing to take them on. Win or lose. No matter the cost.

“It’s not just about lifting weights,” she said near the end of a conversation where hardships and history and huge efforts were discussed with good humour and a wide-open and generous heart. “It’s that what I'm doing is making an impact. On young women's lives, people's lives, and encouraging them to do better and to be better.”