Romanian weightlifter Toma’s decade-plus journey to the Olympic stage ended in heartbreak.
Last updated on August 12th, 2024
If you’re only a casual fan of weightlifting — or the 2024 Olympics was your first exposure to the sport — you probably have no idea what happened to Loredana Toma in Paris.
But those who know, know. Romanian Toma, who is among the world’s most popular women’s weightlifters, “bombed out” during the Women’s 71KG weightlifting event in Paris on Aug. 9.
Failing to post a Total, the sum of an athlete’s heaviest snatch and clean & jerk is a mark of shame for any weightlifter, Olympian or otherwise. The 2024 Olympics were meant to be a triumph. Instead, Toma went out with a whimper.
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Loredana Toma’s Olympic Journey
Let’s get you up to speed. Toma, 29, is a six-time European Champion (plus two additional silver medals), two-time World Champion, and former world record holder.
- She also has a doping sanction to her name from 2014 — par for the course for many ultra-successful weightlifters who came up pre-McLaren report.
These accolades, plus a penchant for ferocity on the competition stage and her rather odd technique, rapidly established Toma as a fan-favorite weightlifter in the mid-to-late 2010s. Fans have dubbed her “the Tomanator” for her no-smiles, all-business attitude at weightlifting meets.
Those who know her personally regard Toma as warm-hearted and kind.
The 2024 Olympics in Paris were a long time coming for Toma, who, despite competing internationally since 2009 at the age of 14, hadn’t made it to the Games before.
- Toma missed out on Rio 2016, likely due to her aforementioned ban for the popular anabolic steroid stanozolol.
- The Romanian weightlifting federation, along with all its athletes, was suspended at the last minute from Tokyo 2020 for multiple PED-related infractions among its athletes.
Toma was not named in the announcement, but she suffered the consequences regardless and did not compete in the Women’s 64KG event in Tokyo. In the months leading up to the 2020 Olympics, Toma was considered a favorite for the podium in the 64s.
The 64-kilogram Olympic Champion, Maude Charron of Canada, won the thing with a 236-kilogram Total. At the 2021 European Championships three months prior to Tokyo, Toma Totaled 244. Before that, at the World Cup, 249.
By any reasonable measure, Toma would have won the 2020 Olympics.
- Charron showed up in Paris and bagged a silver in the Women’s 59KG event, even briefly setting a new Olympic record in the snatch (as in, for like three minutes until it was surpassed).
Toma was openly resentful of having missed out on a second Olympics, this time through no direct fault of her own. During and after the Women’s 64KG event in Tokyo, Toma posted several massive training lifts on social media as if to say, “You’re lucky I’m not there.“
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In Context: In the video above, Toma snatched 115 kilograms, or 253.5 pounds. The heaviest snatch lifted during the Women’s 64s in Tokyo was 105 by Charron.
After Tokyo, Toma would not be seen internationally for a year and a half until she emerged, bulked-up and ballistic, at the 2022 World Weightlifting Championships — the first qualification event for the 2024 Olympics.
Back With a Vengeance
Toma would come out swinging and win Worlds in ’22, setting a 119-kilogram snatch world record in the process. A few days prior, she even snatched 121 in the venue’s training hall.
- Her 121 was unofficial, but almost two years later, the official 71-kilogram snatch world record stands at 121 by Angie Palacios-Dajomes, whom Toma bulldozed at Worlds that year.
2022 Worlds marked a career-high for Toma. She won with a 256-kilogram Total which rocketed her toward the top of the 71-kilogram leaderboard and guaranteed her a ticket to Paris.
But in the 18-ish months that followed, Toma’s performances started sliding backward:
For the most part, Toma held on to her prowess in the snatch, though she never approached a world record again. Her idiosyncratic habit of delayed foot movement in the clean & jerk — once affectionately dubbed the “Toma shuffle” — started working against her. You can see it below from 2019:
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As Paris crept closer, Toma’s prospect of reclaiming her old strength slipped further away. She could clean any weight she called for but began to make a habit of missing split jerks.
Toma finally made it to the Olympic stage a decade after her stanozolol debacle. She hadn’t been implicated in any PED infractions since. Halfway through the Women’s 71s, Toma was in third place by way of a 115-kilogram snatch. She seemed to have returned to form at the last second.
- Then she missed her first clean & jerk at 131 kilograms. At Worlds in ’22, she jerked 137 with room to spare.
She missed it again on her second attempt, then bumped up to 134. Toma just couldn’t stick the split jerk and would end her Olympic journey with a “Did Not Finish” next to her name.
As of this article’s publication, Toma has received an outpouring of support on social media but hasn’t made a peep about how she feels. Drug suspension aside — most people’s favorite weightlifters have served a ban at some point — Toma’s journey to the Olympic stage is heart-wrenching.
Should she contend for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, Toma will be well into her early 30s. The Paris 71KG gold medalist, Olivia Reeves, is 21. If she decides to retire after all this, Toma will be sent off with thunderous applause from her many, many fans.
And then she’ll have a whole new problem: Finding a cabinet big enough to display all her medals.
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Featured Image: Jen Marchese / @one_kilo_
