The whittled down Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games are done and dusted after 11-days of thrilling sporting action put to rest the quadrennial event was losing relevance in modern times.
Kenya emerged third in Africa and 13th overall from the 74 nations that took part in the 23rd edition.
Yet again, track and field proved to be the best medalled discipline from the return of 12, three gold, four silver and five bronze.
Team Kenya’s class of 2026 pales poorly in comparison with the 25 won when the Scottish capital first held the Commonwealth Games in 2014, with 10 gold, 10 silver and five bronze minted 12 years ago.
However, through Joshua Amunga Mboya – Kenya unearthed and celebrated a new sporting star in Scotland.
The East African nation is not famed for her prowess in weightlifting.
But at only 20, Amunga became only the second ever Kenyan weightlifter in history to medal at the Commonwealth Games and indeed, any international multiple discipline sporting event.
Bronze was the hue of his medal, adding his name to the medal chart that apart from his unique exploit, was filled with athletes.
It beggars belief that when Amunga checked into the Team Kenya team camp in June for the final preparations for Glasgow, he could not even lift the 20-kilogram barbell.
Yet, to qualify for the quadrennial games in which competing nations are drawn from member states of the Commonwealth of Nations and their territories, he posted a lifetime best of 241Kgs in the snatch and clean and jerk.
His Glasgow dream almost ended up in flames when in April, his left elbow snapped as he tore his tendon at a qualifying event in Nairobi.
It was a frantic race against time to be fit for the Club Games that ran from July 23 to August 2 in Glasgow after the initial hosts Adelaide of Australia pulled out in 2023, citing rising costs.
“It was very hard to think I was going to make it because I had stayed for almost two months without any change. I could not even lift a phone, leave alone lifting the bar. I could not shower with two hands because my left hand could not bend.
“My hopes were fading because I knew I would not travel if I did not heal from the injury,” the third born in a family of four told SportPesa News.
But when the moment of reckoning came, Amunga, making his first appearance as a senior, delivered the third medal in the 60kg category.
He matched the achievement of Collins Okoth, who won the middle heavyweight 91kg bronze at the Victoria 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada.
The two weightlifting medals came 32 years apart, a lifetime in any sporting discipline.
At the Scottish Event Campus Armadillo main venue, Amunga dropped new national records of 115 kg in the snatch and 145 kg in the clean and jerk to place third overall with 260 kg.
The rare and only medal outside athletics went viral due to his robust celebration as he left Glasgow having also obliterated his personal bests of 110kg in the snatch and 131kg in the clean and jerk.
“I never thought I could win a medal because it was challenging (the field). When I looked at the people I was competing against, they were really good. But I just believed in myself to go into the platform, do my weight and try to beat my previous best.
“But I ended up finding someone to compete with and I beat him,” he disclosed after fending off the challenge from Sri Lanka’s Wiriduwalage-Ka (244kg) who finished just outside the podium in fourth.
The top two, Malaysia’s Bin Kasdan Mohamad Aniq, who claimed gold (273 kg) was the Commonwealth champion from 2022 (55kg) and the 2024 Silver medalist at the World Championships.
India’s silver medalist Rishikanta Singh Chanambam won gold at the 2025 Weightlifting Championship.
Remarkably, his journey to the incredible milestone had only taken six years.
Having been raised in difficult conditions in Kiandutu Slums in Thika, he was introduced to the sport in 2016 when he was only 10 by his coach James Omondi, who famously represented Kenya at the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics.
It wasn’t until 2020, with the advent of the global coronavirus pandemic that Amunga fully pledged his future to the sport.
His first international competition came in 2022 when he travelled to Colombia for the World Weightlifting Championships in December where he featured as a junior.
It was the first time the then 17-year-old was on a plane and the first time he was travelling out of the country while still a Form Three student at Kamenu Secondary School in Thika, Kiambu County.
He then first medalled at the 2024 Africa Junior Championships held from 18-23 November in Nairobi, where he bagged three gold medals in the 61kg category.
At the 2025 African Youth and Junior Weightlifting Championships that took place in Accra, Ghana from 15-22 August, Amunga lifted the continental title with another three gold medal haul in the 60 kg category.
That has, for now, been topped by scooping bronze in his first outing as a senior in Glasgow.
Before it was even official that he had finished third, Amunga’s phone was ringing off the hook.
“My phone has never been as crazy as it was. I did not turn off my WIFI so when I came back, I found an explosion of messages and missed calls with different people reaching out.
“I have not even managed to get back to all the messages till now,” he added.
“Many were congratulatory messages. But one really touched me. A friend told me that apart from him, I had made the country proud and the whole world was looking at me. This was even before all the rounds were done.
“That made me feel special, to make my country proud and to have the nation looking at me.
“I never imagined there would be a time the whole of Kenya would be looking at me. I was really touched. It was the first weightlifting medal in over 30 years and Kenya’s first medal at the Commonwealth Games 2026,” Amunga enthusiastically remarked.
Back in January this year, Amunga was among seven athletes who received the LA 2028 Olympics Individual Athlete Scholarship Programme, an initiative designed to provide targeted athlete-centred support to elite athletes who have demonstrated potential to represent the country at major international competitions.
After his achievements in Glasgow, Amunga is certainly convinced where his journey is headed next.
“My main focus is on qualifying for the Olympics because I’m under an Olympic scholarship and I train twice a day.
“My coach was at the Olympics in Rio and that is all I wish to achieve. He keeps pushing me to try and achieve a medal since he did not do that.”
Coach Omondi is just not his trainer, he is also Amunga’s role model and father figure since he was a kid going through the hardship of slum upbringing.
“I promised him that even if I do not get a medal, I will qualify for the Olympics,” he assured.
Having broken into the Commonwealth podium at 20, Amunga could be the next Kenyan sporting prodigy to carve an international niche in one of the so-called minor disciplines in his country.
And he has an established path to follow.
Jason Dunford made history as the first Kenyan swimmer to win a Commonwealth gold medal at Delhi 2010 in India.
When the Olympics came around in London two years later, Dunford made history as the first Kenyan swimmer to break a world record as he went on to make the final.
And at the preceding Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games in Austria, a certain Janeth Jepkosgei ended the extended reign of Mozambique legend Maria Mutola in the women’s 800m.
A year later, she stood as the first ever female World Champion at the distance in Osaka, Japan before winning silver at the Beijing 2008 Summer Games in China.
And while many in Kenya do not regard Commonwealth Games success on the same footing as the Olympics or World Championships, for prodigious talent like Amunga, they are the perfect launchpad to international success.
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