April 18

She is one of the strongest women in the world, becoming a national champion and Olympic medalist while still a teenager.

Cheryl Haworth was born in Savannah and began lifting weights at age 13 to improve at softball. Her father took her to a gym, where she power-cleaned 110 pounds. She trained daily and began competing, taking women’s weightlifting by storm. Within two years she had twice won gold at the U.S. Junior National Championships and qualified for the 1998 world championship team—but was too young to compete. At 16, she won another national title, a gold medal in the Pan Am Games, and silver in the Junior World Championships. With the Olympic Games approaching, comparisons to Georgia-born weightlifting legend Paul Anderson were inevitable. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, women competed in weightlifting for the first time, and Haworth set five American records on her way to a bronze medal.

This champion weightlifter in a class all her own, was born on April 18, 1983, Today in Georgia History.