Twelve years after he walked out of the athletes’ village in Glasgow and did not go home, weightlifter Cyrille Tchatchet II has won a Commonwealth Games medal in the same city.
Tchatchet, now 31, competed for Cameroon at Glasgow 2014 and finished fifth in the 85kg. He did not travel back with his team-mates. He has never felt able to explain publicly why he left, and spent the next two months sleeping rough in southern England, the BBC reports.
He was granted refugee status in 2016, competed for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team at the Tokyo 2020 Games and later became eligible to represent England. On Thursday he lifted a total of 374kg in the 110kg category for silver, beaten only by Fiji’s Taniela Tuisuva Rainibogi, whose 378kg set a record.
“It’s been a full circle for me,” he said, describing a dream he had at times believed would never happen. He recalled telling his mother, Eveline Njike, that he had nowhere to go after leaving the Commonwealth village.
Tchatchet has spoken about attempting to take his own life during his hardest years. He now works as a mental health nurse in Oldbury, and said the medal stands for hope and perseverance. “Despite the hardships we go through, there’s always a possibility,” he said.
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Source: BBC News
