‘The bigger you are, the more invisible you are’: Olympic champion Cheryl Haworth on her journey from the USA’s Deep South to Hong Kong
The youngest American weightlifter to win a medal at the Olympics now lives in Hong Kong. She talks about her three Games campaigns, her artistic side and the Deep South
A childhood in Savannah, Georgia, could not be any more different from that of most Hong Kong children. In the harvest season on the banks of the blue bayou, the waft of hay and honeysuckle fills timber porches resplendent with swinging timber couches.
With their long pontoons bearing pagoda-like structures, even singers Roy Orbison and Linda Ronstadt found the bayou something worth singing about.
It was in this Deep South rural idyll that Cheryl Haworth spent her childhood outdoors, dreaming big.
With her friends, Haworth roamed the forests near her home, dodging the odd rattlesnake and propping her buddy, Steven, up high so that he could nail the timber boards in to make the elaborate treehouses she designed, the remnants of which still stand today.
Watch: Cheryl Haworth shares her favourite moments at the 2000 Sydney Games
Cheryl, a keen softball player, was non-plussed about her strength at the time. “When I started lifting at 13, I weighed roughly 105 kilos, and was lifting about 60 kilos, so being a super heavyweight back then was pretty much my only option,” she says.