Cikamatana reaches the end of long road to the Olympics

SYDNEY : Eileen Cikamatana's path to her first Olympics has been anything but straightforward but the Fijian-born weightlifter punched her ticket to Paris at the weekend and is determined to return with a medal.

A teenage prodigy, Cikamatana won a Commonwealth Games gold medal for Fiji in 2018 but a schism in the weightlifting world in the island nation led to her upping sticks and throwing her lot in with Australia.

Unfortunately, she made the decision too late to qualify for the Tokyo Games but she will now get her chance to become an Australian Olympian after being named in the 81kg class for Paris on Sunday.

"The Olympics is the biggest goal of any athlete," the bubbly 24-year-old told Reuters earlier this year.

"It's every athlete's dream to be at the Olympics and to be a podium finisher is the greatest goal that anyone could look at. That's what we're going for."

Cikamatana's hometown of Levuka was for a long time the home of Fijian weightlifting but she was reluctant to take up the sport when first approached by coach Joe Vueti.

"Back in 2012 when I was first asked if I wanted to do weightlifting, I said 'no, it's a men's sport'," Cikamatana recalled.

"He said 'no, my niece is competing at the 2012 Olympics in London'. So I stayed up in early morning just to watch her compete and that kind of changed my mind.

"The second time they asked me, I went to my dad and he agreed and here I am. I have never looked back."

The niece was Maria Liku, one of a band of Fijian weightlifters that Vueti coached to success until he fell out with the national federation and set up his own body.

Cikamatana also fell out with the national federation after they tried to replace the Australian coach, Paul Coffa, who had guided her to the 2018