Sarah Davies British Weightlifter’s Career, Titles and Personal Bests
Quick Bio: Sarah Davies (born 19 August 1992, Preston, England) is a British weightlifter competing in the 64kg and 69kg weight classes. She is a Commonwealth Games gold medallist (2022), a two-time European Champion (2025, 2026), and a World Championships silver medallist (2021). She represents England and Great Britain internationally.
There aren’t many athletes who can say they’ve stood on an Olympic platform and a pageant stage in the same year — but that’s exactly the kind of career Sarah Davies has built. Best known across British sport as a trailblazing weightlifter, Davies has spent more than a decade rewriting the record books, challenging outdated stereotypes, and proving that strength and femininity were never mutually exclusive to begin with.
This article looks at who Sarah Davies is, how she rose through the ranks of British weightlifting, the titles and personal bests that define her career, and the life she’s built for herself away from the platform.
Who Is Sarah Davies?
Sarah Davies is a British weightlifter who has represented both England and Great Britain at the highest level of international competition. Standing 5ft 4in and competing at a bodyweight of around 64kg, she’s built a reputation as one of the most consistent and decorated lifters to come out of the UK in recent memory.
Davies didn’t grow up dreaming of Olympic barbells, though. Her path into the sport came almost by accident, while she was studying for her undergraduate degree in Leeds — a city that happened to host the national training centre for British Weightlifting at the time. A few friendships with lifters training there were all it took to introduce her to a sport she’d go on to dominate.
Early Career and Rise in Weightlifting
Davies began weightlifting in 2011, at the age of 19, with no real background in the sport beyond childhood gymnastics. What followed was a rapid rise through the domestic and international ranks that few could have predicted.
By 2015, she had become the first British woman to win the European U23 Championships — an early sign that her talent wasn’t just promising but genuinely elite. From there, her results only grew more impressive, as she moved from a rising junior prospect into one of Britain’s senior international representatives.
Her progress was helped along by a shift happening more broadly in British weightlifting. As Davies has pointed out in past interviews, women’s participation in the sport has grown substantially in the UK over the past decade, to the point where competition for medals at the top level is now fierce — a very different picture from when she first picked up a barbell.
Major Competition Achievements
Sarah Davies’ medal cabinet reads like a tour of the sport’s biggest stages, spanning Commonwealth, European, World and Olympic competition.
Commonwealth Games
Davies won silver at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in the women’s 69kg category, before going one better four years later. At the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, competing in front of a home crowd, she claimed gold in the 71kg division — arguably the highlight of her competitive career to date.
World Championships
At the 2018 World Championships in Anaheim, Davies produced what was, at the time, the best individual result by a British woman in fifteen years, finishing sixth overall. She went on to surpass even that in 2021, winning a silver medal in the women’s 71kg category at the World Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan — becoming the first British lifter to win a World silver in the clean and jerk.
European Championships
Davies has been a fixture on European podiums for the best part of a decade. She took silver at the 2021 European Championships in Moscow, before capturing gold in the 64kg category at the 2025 European Championships in Chișinău, and following it up with another gold at 63kg at the 2026 Championships in Batumi.
Olympic Debut
Davies made her Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, finishing fifth — a strong showing that underlined her status among the world’s elite lifters and set the stage for the medal-winning form that followed at the Worlds just months later.
Personal Bests and Weight Class History
Across her career, Davies has competed in several different weight categories, including 63kg, 64kg, 69kg and 71kg, adjusting her competition class at various points as the sport’s categories were reorganised internationally.
Her personal best lifts stand at 101kg in the snatch and 125kg in the clean and jerk. Earlier in her career, she also set a British record of 129kg in the clean and jerk at a European Championships, underlining just how much raw power sits behind her technical lifting.
Life Outside the Platform
What sets Sarah Davies apart from many of her competitors is the double life she’s led alongside her weightlifting career. Long before she was picking up Commonwealth medals, Davies was also competing in beauty pageants — winning titles including Miss West Yorkshire and, in 2019, Miss Intercontinental England.
Rather than treating the two pursuits as contradictory, Davies has spoken openly about wanting to be a role model in both spaces, pushing back against the idea that strength and traditional femininity can’t coexist. That stance hasn’t always been met kindly — she’s spoken about facing online abuse and criticism at pageant events specifically because of her muscular physique — but she’s used the experience to fuel her advocacy rather than step back from it.
That advocacy extends beyond pageantry, too. Davies has served on the International Weightlifting Federation’s Executive Board, one of only a small number of women in that role, where she has pushed for reform following the doping and governance scandals that have troubled the sport’s international federation in recent years.
Coaching and Post-Athlete Ventures
Alongside her competitive career, Davies runs her own coaching business, working with athletes outside of her own training. She has also taken on a Performance and Talent Consultant role connected to Team GB weightlifting, applying her competitive experience to developing the next generation of lifters.
She’s balanced all of this with academic study, too, having pursued postgraduate study at the University of Nottingham while continuing to train and compete at an international level — a schedule that says as much about her discipline as any of her medals do.
On the subject of Sarah Davies net worth, there’s no publicly verified figure available. As with most elite weightlifters outside of the small handful of global superstar athletes, her income is generally understood to come from a combination of sport funding, sponsorships, coaching, and consultancy work rather than the kind of commercial deals that make headlines — so any specific net worth figure circulating online should be treated as speculation rather than fact.
FAQs
How much can Sarah Davies lift?
Her personal bests are 101kg in the snatch and 125kg in the clean and jerk.
What weight class does Sarah Davies compete in?
She has competed across the 63kg, 64kg, 69kg and 71kg categories over the course of her career, most recently at 63–64kg.
Has Sarah Davies won an Olympic medal?
Not yet. She made her Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, finishing fifth, but has yet to medal at the Olympics.
Where is Sarah Davies from?
She was born in Preston, England, and began her weightlifting career while studying in Leeds.
What is Sarah Davies net worth?
There’s no confirmed public figure for her net worth; her income is understood to come primarily from sport funding, sponsorships, and coaching rather than disclosed earnings.
