The decisive kilos came on the platform in Cali. Ghofrane Ghrissa lifted 90 kilograms in the snatch, then held her nerve through the clean and jerk to finish on a 200-kilogram total. It was enough for the world youth title in the women's 77 kg category. Tunisia had its champion.
The 2026 IWF World Youth Championships reached their sixth day on 11 July. The 77 kg contest turned on the snatch. Ghofrane Ghrissa held on for victory after building a lead in the snatch, making 90-110-200. That opening lift shaped everything that followed. Ghrissa took gold in the snatch. In the clean and jerk she managed 110 kilograms, good for bronze, before the totals were counted.
Decided on the finest margin
The gold was not secure until the last bar was down. Jea Mae Palagtiw from the Philippines made the same total and would have won if she had opted for, and made, a kilo more on her final attempt; Palagtiw finished 88-112-200. Two lifters, one total. The tie broke Ghrissa's way, her lower bodyweight and earlier lead settling the matter in her favour. Polina Kalnyk from Ukraine won clean and jerk gold and finished third on 87-112-199. The margin between first and third was a single kilogram across the field.
The strength of the class sharpened the result. Palagtiw became the sixth medallist on total for her country in Cali, five of them female. Ghrissa met that depth and came through it, the snatch lead she had built holding firm to the final count.
A step already prepared
The Cali title did not arrive from nowhere. Ghrissa is the continental youth and junior champion. In December 2025 she raised the Tunisian anthem three times at the African Youth Games in Luanda, taking gold in the snatch, the clean and jerk and the total in the same 77 kg category. Those three golds read now as a rehearsal for Colombia. The African and continental honours came first. The world title followed.
There is a family thread to the story too. Her brother Rayen lifted at the 2023 World Youths. The platform is familiar ground in the Ghrissa household. What she carried to Cali was not only her own form but a line already drawn through the sport.
Her result gave the Tunisian delegation its first title of the championships, an African winner in a global field that ran from Asia to Latin America to Europe. The trajectory is plain enough: continental champion, then junior champion, now champion of the world at youth level, and still years short of her senior prime.
She came to Cali holding a lead. She left holding the world.
