{"id":348876,"date":"2023-11-24T00:37:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-24T01:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=348876"},"modified":"2023-11-24T03:01:11","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T03:01:11","slug":"aussie-gold-medallists-surreal-hug-with-grandmother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=348876","title":{"rendered":"Aussie gold medallist's surreal hug with grandmother"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian weightlifter<\/a>\ufeff Eileen Cikamatana won gold medals at the Pacific Games and enjoyed a heart-warming moment with family, including her grandmother who had never before seen her compete in the flesh.<\/p>\n

Contesting the women's 81kg \ufeffcategory in the Solomon Islands, Cikamatana secured three gold medals after topping the snatch, the clean and jerk and the total column.<\/p>\n

The Fiji-born star also shattered the three Pacific Games records in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands.<\/p>\n

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Her mother, father, sister, aunties, uncles, cousins and grandmother were all in the crowd cheering her on.<\/p>\n

Her grandmother Roselyn, who was born in the Solomon Islands and moved to Fiji, had only ever seen her granddaughter in action over live streams.\ufeff<\/p>\n

Tears flowed as Cikamatana removed her gold medals and hung them around the necks of her loved ones.\ufeff<\/p>\n

\"Australian<\/p>\n

"This is a very special competition for me, one of the best," Cikamatana said.<\/p>\n

"Ever since I started winning medals, I always dreamed of being able to go to loved ones in the crowd and hand over my medal \u2014 and today, I feel so special to pass over my medals to my grandmother, here in the place she's from.<\/p>\n

"We were both in tears, we couldn't utter a word, it left us speechless.<\/p>\n

"Even my Dad couldn't say anything, or my aunty. Mum was able to talk \u2026 because Mum is Mum."<\/p>\n

Cikamatana's grandfather died this year and the 24-year-old said she would have loved him to witness the special moment in Honiara.<\/p>\n

"But I'm so happy my grandmother could be here in person," Cikamatana added.<\/p>\n

"Finishing on the podium at Pacific Games is out of this world. Doing it with our friends from all over the Pacific and to catch up with old friends makes it even better.<\/p>\n

"The people in the crowd are the most special people in the world to me.<\/p>\n

"It's a special moment I'll hold forever."<\/p>\n

\"Aussie<\/p>\n

Cikamatana lifted 125kg in the snatch and 145kg in the clean and jerk to chalk up a total of 260kg.<\/p>\n

Her family was decked out in freshly made supporter t-shirts, leaving her amazed.<\/p>\n

"Seeing them walk in I didn't know what to say," Cikamatana said.<\/p>\n

"For them to go out of the way and get those t-shirts printed made me want to win even more for them.<\/p>\n

"I hope they got a spare for me."<\/p>\n

Cikamatana won a gold medal in the 87kg category at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, breaking three Commonwealth Games records in the process.<\/p>\n

She originally represented Fiji but switched her allegiance to Australia after becoming an Australian citizen in 2019.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian weightlifter\ufeff Eileen Cikamatana won gold medals at the Pacific Games and enjoyed a heart-warming moment with family, including her grandmother who had never before […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=348876"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348881,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348876\/revisions\/348881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/348878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=348876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=348876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=348876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}