lit a candle 9h agoNever followed weightlifting much but 17 years old lifting for her country at that size, that takes some nerve. Respect for that.
Their story
Alberta Boatema Ampomah was a Ghanaian weightlifter who became the first woman to lift for Ghana at the Olympic Games, competing at London 2012 when she was 17. She later served her fellow athletes on the Ghana Olympic Committee Athletes' Commission. Her death was announced on Sunday 8 November 2026,…
Alberta Boatema Ampomah was a Ghanaian weightlifter who became the first woman to lift for Ghana at the Olympic Games, competing at London 2012 when she was 17. She later served her fellow athletes on the Ghana Olympic Committee Athletes' Commission. Her death was announced on Sunday 8 November 2026, five days after her 32nd birthday.
She was born in Accra on 3 November 1994. As a teenager she rose quickly through Ghanaian weightlifting, and at 15 she represented Ghana in the women's 75kg category at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The Ghana News Agency also reported that she competed at the first Youth Olympic Games in Singapore the same year.
In 2012 she took bronze in the clean and jerk at the African Olympic qualifiers and received a wild card place at the London Olympics. Competing in the women's +75kg super heavyweight event, she lifted 73kg in the snatch and 101kg in the clean and jerk for a total of 174kg, finishing 13th of 14 lifters. It made her the first Ghanaian woman to compete in Olympic weightlifting.
After her lifting career she stayed in sport. She competed in and officiated at armwrestling events in Ghana and helped the sport grow there. She was an executive member of the reconstituted GOC Athletes' Commission, working with fellow Olympians including chairman John Ampomah, Abeku Jackson, Gemma Acheampong, Emmanuel Dasor, Abdul Wahid Omar and Kaya Forson to strengthen athlete representation and improve welfare after competitive careers.
The Ghana Olympians Association, the Ghana Olympic Committee and the GOC Athletes' Commission announced her death in a joint statement that mourned "Alberta Ampomah, OLY (1994-2026), Ghana's first Olympic weightlifter and a devoted servant of her fellow Olympians and athletes." Neither her family nor the Olympic bodies disclosed a cause of death. Athletes and officials remembered her as a trailblazer who encouraged young Ghanaian women to take up weightlifting. The Ghana News Agency reported that tributes poured in from athletes, officials and sports fans, and described her death as a huge loss to Ghana's Olympic movement and the wider sporting community.
Some reports of her death spelled her names Boatemaa and Amponsah, but the joint statement from the Olympic bodies used the name Alberta Ampomah, the form under which she competed in London.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Ghana News Agency (Simon Asare, 8 November 2026); 3News (Araba Incoom, 8 November 2026); Adomonline and Modern Ghana. Wikipedia ↗
Photos
1by People Forever
She was only 13th but she opened the door, that's the part that matters.