Bulwell star Emily Campbell storms to weightlifting gold at the Commonwealth Games

Campbell, who won silver at the Olympics last year, was a class apart as she dominated the women’s over-87kg category contest, finishing with a Games record total of 286kg.

Campbell was leading after the first stage of the competition and when her nearest rival, Feagaiga Stowers of Samoa, twice failed to lift 154k in the clean and jerk section, to finish with the Bulwell star was assured gold with two lifts to spare.

With gold in her pocket, Campbell, one of the England flag bearers at the opening ceremony, then finished in style by lifting 162kg for a new personal best in the clean and jerk.

Speaking to BBC Sport, Campbell said: “I’m absolutely elated, I knew this was going to be a tough competition, the Samoan wasn’t going to hand to me on a plate, I knew I’d have to work for it, but I said to myself whatever I needed to lift to win that gold medal I was going to do it.

"I hope people will now see how beautiful our sport is and that people will see that it doesn’t matter what you look like, what shape you are, what size you are, you can pick up a bar and you can do it.

"There’s a brilliant community in weightlifting and I hope more people will want to take it up.”

Stowers took the silver medal with a final total of 268kg, and bronze went to Australia's Charisma Amoe Tarrant.

Campbell continued: “That was a PB attempt for me.

"I’d done it in training but we don’t count them, I wanted to do it on stage – and what a time to do it.

"Doing six out of six lifts is what every weightlifter aims for so I couldn’t be happier.”

And Campbell hailed the home crowd who roared her on to victory.

She said: “I don’t think we’ve ever had a crowd that immense and that reactive.

"They were loving it and that’s all you want from a weightlifting competition.

“Those weights are heavy, you have to lift all by yourself, and to have that crowd behind you is fantastic.”