How one Clonakilty athlete is still hitting peak form and winning medals in her forties. Megan Mulligan reports...
THERE are not many women who hit the top of their sporting game in their forties – but Eithne Harte is bucking the trend.
The Clonakilty native returned to the top of the podium this summer, winning gold at the 2025 National Masters Championships for her eighth national title in weightlifting.
Olympic Weightlifting is a competitive strength sport where athletes attempt to lift the heaviest weight they can in two types of lifts, the clean and jerk and the snatch.
Eithne admits this medal ‘meant a lot because I hadn’t won it in the past two years after winning seven years in a row’. She is the oldest female winner which, she said, ‘felt quite special’.
A leading figure in Irish weightlifting, Eithne previously competed at the European Masters Weightlifting Championships in 2016, where she has since earned two gold medals. She took bronze at the World Masters Championships in 2023 and continues to be a dominant force in the sport.
Her success is rooted in more than just her strength. After each competition, she reviews videos to analyse techniques, searching for patterns to refine performances for herself and for those she works with.
‘More errors show up at competitions, at the heavy weights,’ she explained. ‘I love creating training programmes and then watching them in action.’
That analytical approach comes naturally. ‘I’ve always been interested in science, strength, and research,” she said. “I nerd out on it.’
Surprisingly, Eithne didn’t take up the sport until her late twenties.
She wasn’t particularly athletic growing up.
She played GAA and did some running, but described herself as ‘not very good’.
But everything changed when she attended a kettlebell class on the beach at the age of 29.
From there, she joined a local CrossFit gym and quickly realised she had a natural talent for weightlifting.
She became involved with the gym’s small lifting club and entered her first competition, the Cork Open, in 2013.
It was a defining moment. Competing alongside women she admired, she found inspiration in an unexpected lifter, an unknown competitor who held her own against the sport’s superstars.
That’s when she realised that, if she took it seriously, she could compete among the best.
Soon after, Eithne shifted much of her focus to Olympic weightlifting and she began developing her own training programmes.
In 2017, she teamed up with coach Kieran Howlin and the two opened Howling Heart Gym in Clonakilty which has its own weightlifting group.
From a team of 30 weightlifters, 15 of them have competed and, so far, they have eight medals between them.
With six qualified coaches and support from Eithne’s own coach and mentor, Mike O’Leary of Cork Weightlifting Club, the gym has become a hub for the sport in West Cork.
Eithne is also on a mission to challenge outdated perceptions about Olympic weightlifting. ‘We’re not bodybuilders or powerlifters,’ she said. ‘It’s not dangerous for children or teens, and it’s not really male-dominated.’
In fact, she notes, there is a strong female presence on the Weightlifting Ireland Committee, along with many female coaches.
She encourages anyone who might be interested to ‘give it a try, adding: ‘Don’t be self-conscious and don’t worry about failing.’
She explains, in fact, that ‘a huge number of older women are taking up weightlifting’ because it is a sport that can be developed and more easily maintained in later years.
Olympic weightlifting in Ireland remains small but close-knit, with only around 15 clubs nationwide.
There are only three big clubs, of which Cork is one.
The rest of the clubs have 30 members or less.
The discipline has a strong sense of community with dedicated volunteers. In fact, each competition relies solely on its volunteers to run it, from transporting the heavy weights to setting up the platforms.
Eithne hopes for more awareness for her sport. She wants ‘more visibility, more funding for high performances, more athletes at the Olympics, and more media coverage’.
And she is doing her part through Her Moves, a Sport Ireland initiative promoting minority sports especially to teenage girls.
As part of the programme, Eithne participates in outreach, especially in schools, to bring awareness about Olympic Weightlifting to as many young people as she can.
At 42, Harte credits her longevity in the sport to her focus on recovery and her individualised mobility training.
These days, she will take it year-by-year and while she ‘gets a buzz’ off of doing her best, she also doesn’t let Olympic weightlifting define her identity.
Still, she isn’t done yet. Eithne Harte is now setting her sights on the World Masters Championships in 2026.
And whatever the outcome, she’ll continue championing the sport regardless.
She cares deeply about the Olympic Weightlifting and she wants everyone ‘from the 12-year-old to the 70-year-old to be excited about this sport I love’.
