That is the view of Paul Coffa, the general secretary of the Commonwealth Weightlifting Federation who has coached athletes from Australia and various Pacific Islands to more than 100 medals since his first Commonwealth Games in 1978.

Coffa, an Australian who is attending his 12^th successive Games here, expects a good standard in the men’s events but said the women’s contests would be at their highest level since they were introduced in Manchester in 2002, two years after women’s weightlifting gained Olympic recognition.

"We have a female Olympic champion competing for the first time, we have other Olympic medallists, world record-holders," Coffa said.

"Even the best lifters are going to have competition and we will see world-class performances in many of the categories.

"Women’s weightlifting at the Commonwealth Games is at an all-time high here. 

"It has never been as strong as this, no way."

The champion from Tokyo last year is Maude Charron from Canada, who became the first female lifter from a Commonwealth nation to stand on top of the Olympic podium when she won the 64 kilograms category. 

She is the clear favourite, on the rankings, to win at the same weight in Birmingham.

Charron’s fellow Canadian Christine Girard is also an Olympic champion, but her 2012 victory was a result of retrospective doping disqualifications of the top two finishers in the old 63kg category, and she did not receive he medal until 2019.

Charron, 29, is staying in the 64kg class in an attempt to win her second Commonwealth Games title in Birmingham, and will take a holiday afterwards to tour Scotland and visit London.

She is expected to move down to 59kg afterwards, as 64kg will not feature on the programme for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Canada also sent a team to Bogotá in Colombia for the Pan American Championships that end today, but have one of the strongest teams in Birmingham, with seven men and seven women, many of them medal contenders.

Charron is one of five weightlifters who were named as flagbearers for the Opening Ceremony in Birmingham - four of them female.

The sole male is Indika Dissanayake of Sri Lanka and the other women are Emily Campbell of England, Holly O'Shea of Gibraltar and 16-year-old Tenishia Thornton, whose recent victory at the Youth World Championships made her the first weightlifter from Malta to win a world title.

Based on the size of their teams and their positions in the Commonwealth rankings, Canada and India are expected to vie for top place in the medals table.

Nigeria, Australia, England, Malaysia and Samoa are among other nations that expect to win multiple medals.

Mirabai Chanu, a silver medallist at 49kg in Tokyo and holder of the clean and jerk world record at that weight, is a strong favourite to win India’s first gold medal of the Games tomorrow, on the first of five days of competition.

Chanu, a world champion in 2017 and Commonwealth Games gold medallist four years ago in Gold Coast, is one of three Indian athletes ranked top in their weight category. 

"The Commonwealth Games will be easy for me… I will be fighting with myself," Chanu said before flying to England.

Chanu said she may attempt to better her own world record in Birmingham. 

If she does it, she would be the first weightlifter to set a world record at the Commonwealth Games since Doug Hepburn in the now defunct press in 1954.

Campbell, who became the first British woman to win an Olympic medal with a super-heavyweight silver in Tokyo, is rated England’s strongest gold-medal prospect and Sarah Davies, fifth in Tokyo at 64kg, has the best numbers in the 71kg category in which she won a World Championship silver medal last December.

The Samoans Feagaiga Stowers, women’s super-heavyweight gold medallist four years ago, and Don Opeloge are extra keen to win medals after missing the Olympic Games because of COVID-19 travel restrictions imposed by the Samoan Government three weeks before they were due to fly to Japan.

Samoa’s "Dream Team" has high hopes finishing near the top of the medals table.

The other world record-holder in the field is Eileen Cikamatana, who holds three junior world records at two different weights.

She failed to make a total at the World Championships eight months ago and has seen Birmingham 2022 as a priority since switching nationality from Fiji to Australia in 2019.

Another Oceania lifter, 38-year-old Dika Toua, is hoping to be on the Commonwealth Games podium for a fourth time.

The Papua New Guinea athlete, who was the first woman ever to make a lift at the Olympic Games in 2000, was a gold medallist at Glasgow 2014, and recently won her 13^th continental title.

New Zealand super-heavyweight David Liti and Boady Santavy of Canada at 96kg both finished just outside the medals in Tokyo and are among the highest-ranked men’s performers.