Cyrille Tchatchet

Cyrille Fagat Tchatchet II (born 1 August 1995) is a Cameroon-born British weightlifter. He competed in the 85 kg weight category at the 2014 Commonwealth Games for the Cameroon team and finished fifth.

He took up weightlifting at the age of 14. He also competed at the British senior weightlifting and under-23 championship 2016 where he was third and first respectively. He won the British, English and BUCS weightlifting championships 2017, 2018 and 2019. In June 2021, he was selected to represent the Refugee Olympic Team in weightlifting.

On the 5th April 2022, Cyrille was cleared by the International Weightlifting Federation to represent British Weight Lifting at international competitions and the England at the Commonwealth Games. His first international competition as a British weightlifter was the 2022 European Weightlifting Championships in Tirana, Albania.

Early life
Cyrille comes from a family of six children and is the 3rd born. His mother separated with his father in the year 2000 and Cyrille and his siblings were looked after by their mother who is a business woman. He attended Government Bilingual Practising High School in Yaoundé and started studying for a degree in geography at the University of Yaounde before stopping to focus full-time on weightlifting training to prepare for the Commonwealth Games.

Weightlifting career
Cyrille took up weightlifting at the age of 14 after seeing the picture of his cousin's father who was a weightlifter representing Cameroon. He therefore started training at Golden weightlifting club before switching to WOCA weightlifting club.

Personal life
Cyrille moved to the United Kingdom in 2014, after defecting from the Cameroonian team during the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. He spent two months homeless in Brighton, and contemplated suicide before calling the Samaritans, who talked him out of it.

He obtained refugee status in 2016. He decided to pursue a BSc Mental Health Nursing degree at Middlesex University after experiencing mild depression while claiming asylum, and now works as a mental health nurse.