Canadian weightlifter Maude Charron travelled twisty road after winning gold in Tokyo

Canada's Maude Charron competes in the women's weightlifting 59Kg at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP /Moises Castillo)

Maude Charron's journey after her weightlifting gold in Tokyo included a "princess" knee, the elimination of her weight class from the Olympic Games and a coaching change.

Charron is set to compete Thursday at the Paris Olympics after the 31-year-old from Rimouski, Que., captured gold in her Olympic debut in 2021 in the women's 64-kilogram division.

That division won't exist at the games this year as the seven weight classes in each gender in Tokyo have been amalgamated to five.

Charron's choice was to go up to 71 kilograms, or down to 59. She chose the latter, with everything that entails.

"I'll be against two other reigning Olympic champions," Charron said. "We're three now in the same Olympic category. It will be very challenging. It's a very stacked category.

"I usually train around 62 or 62.5 kilograms. Every single competition, I have to lose that weight."

Charron earned 59-kg world championship bronze in 2022, but a flare-up of reactive tendinopathy in her knee forced her withdrawal from the 2023 championship. Her inability to train without further inflaming her knee weighed on her.

"It impacted my mood a lot. If I'm not able to do that one thing in my day that matters the most, what am I?" she asked.

But solid training to start 2024 and a bronze medal at a World Cup and an Olympic qualifier in Phuket, Thailand, in April fortified Charron for Paris.

She set a Pan American record in the snatch lifting 106 pounds, and her total of 236 after the clean and jerk was another Pan Am record.

"I was just hoping that, for once, now that I was able to have a great preparation, that my competition result will show, which it did," she said. "It's reassuring to see what I can do when I have a proper preparation."

Charron still coddles that knee and the muscles around it, however.

"A high-maintenance princess," she calls it. "I have to massage it every day, I have to put the little cream on it every night before going to bed, it needs to stretched every morning. I need to get physio and acupuncture every week."

Charron switched coaches in 2022 to Spencer Arnold, an American who coached Kate Vibert of the U.S. to 76-kg silver in Tokyo.

"I was not sure if I wanted to continue or go for another Olympics," Charron said. "I still believed that I had more in me and I could do a little bit more for the sport. I needed to compete in the new weight category, so I needed something different. I needed someone who knows how to deal with weight cut and stuff.

"I had some issues with my old coach and we tried to solve it, but it was not working. For me, it was if I continue the sport and I continue for another quad, it's either I quit or I change coaches.

"I wanted someone who had experience with the Olympics, who had athletes who are currently trying to get to Paris. That limited even more my options, so I reached out to Spencer. I knew he was already working remotely with athletes around the world."

Safe-sport regulations requiring national background checks for coaches meant Charron was required to have a Canadian coach. Enter Vancouver weightlifting coach David Ogle, who was familiar with Arnold through athletes they both knew.

A Zoom call between the three in late 2022 solidified Charron's two-coach system.

"Imagine getting your driver's licence and someone throwing you the keys to the Ferrari," Ogle said. "I have to give Maude a lot of credit. She was pretty open and trusting to something that she probably had never envisioned when she first set out down this path."

Charron flew to international events out of Vancouver or Atlanta to get face time with her coaches. Ogle occasionally stopped into her home. Video feedback continually circulated between the three.

But Charron was also accustomed to training alone in her garage, with rescue dogs Murph and Tokyo her only audience.

She's completed her Quebec police certification for a potential future career.

Since she switched to her new weight class in 2022, Ogle points out that Charron has added five kilograms to her total despite setbacks with her knee.

"The way she is currently lifting at the body weight she's at is significant," he said.

Charron's drive to navigate the challenges Paris posed to her the last three years is the same determination that got her into weightlifting.

"When I started weightlifting, I was doing CrossFit at the same time. I entered a world of an old sport with old vision, an old practice, and I arrived there being already good at it. So it shocked a lot of people," Charron said.

"I had a lot of comments like I'm too old to start a new sport, I don't have the right background, I don't have the right shoes, I don't have the right coach, I don't train in the right environment. So I had a lot of judgment, a lot of doubts, but I was like, 'let me show you how I can still make it happen without having the perfect shoes, the perfect whatever.'

"That was one of the biggest (motivators), to show people that I can still do it and show myself I can still do it."

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 7, 2024.