Powerlifter Siobhan Engeler’s nails and singlet will be green and gold when she steps on to the international platform, but her trademark purple hair is staying put. She speaks to DHWANI PATEK from Canada. 

Powerlifter Siobhan Engeler and her mum, Fiona, will be in Canada, but the family back in Canberra plans to be up before dawn on September 22 to watch Siobhan compete for Australia.

The 2026 Commonwealth Classic & Equipped Powerlifting & Bench Press Championships in Winnipeg are a long way, in every sense, from a gym in Harrison in 2016.

Siobhan, now 27, lives with a mild intellectual disability and drug-resistant epilepsy, diagnosed when she was three. Her training is built around that: short, tightly structured sessions, clear repetition, and support to manage medication and fatigue. None of it, she says, has stopped her doing what she loves.

“There’s not a lot I can do, like I can’t drive, I can’t drink,” she says. “But that doesn’t stop me from hanging out with friends, doing powerlifting, and going to the gym.”

She’s also candid about the parts that are harder. 

“I used to be ashamed of it,” she says of her epilepsy. “I still cry sometimes. I was always ashamed, and I’d say to mum, I wish I didn’t have this. But there’s not a lot we can do, really, to be honest.”

Powerlifting wasn’t her idea, at least not at first. She still tells the story of how she got there with a laugh.

“I was just being kidnapped by my mother,” she says. “I thought we were just going shopping. I was getting a birthday gift, and then all of a sudden mum turned into our gym in Harrison. I thought, what are we doing here?”

She met the trainers at Elements for Life Team Training Centre that day and chose a female coach, Erin Wells, because she felt more comfortable with her. It grew into far more than a coaching relationship.

“She’s like a second mum to me, basically. But very, very strict.”

A gym visit turned into a first competition in 2018, a Ladies of Lifting event entered alongside gym friends, raising money for domestic violence services along the way. 

She was hooked, and kept competing for six years, building steadily from lighter loads to deadlifts over 100 kilograms.

In Aug 2024, Siobhan decided to raise the stakes, starting with powerlifting and strength coach Athanasia McDonald, at The Strength Syndicate in Weetangera, while keeping her functional training going with Erin.

The jump paid off fast. At her first Australian Powerlifting Alliance-sanctioned local competition in Canberra, she won her division and was named overall Best Female Lifter in the Special Olympics category. 

At the MegaNationals in Sydney in April, her first Nationals, she went nine for nine on her lifts, set personal bests of a 112.5kg squat and a 125kg deadlift, and took Best Female Lifter honours again. 

Winnipeg will be her fourth major competition, and her third with Athanasia in under three years.

On the platform, Siobhan is focused. Off it, she is cheering for everyone else.

And that community matters to her mum, Fiona.

“Powerlifting may look like an individual sport, but the atmosphere around competition is one of the things that keeps bringing Siobhan back,” says Fiona. 

“You will be on a stage in front of hundreds, but you don’t know them,” she says. “Everybody in that room is cheering for you.”

For Siobhan, there are two clear targets in Winnipeg.

A medal would be nice.

A new personal best would be even better.

Siobhan’s purple hair, nails and singlets have been her trademark since her epilepsy diagnosis, supporting the Epilepsy Association. In Winnipeg, two of the three are changing.

“The nails and singlet will be green and gold,” Siobhan says. “The hair is staying purple.”

The trip is entirely self-funded.

“There’s not a lot of money in powerlifting,” Fiona says. But when the invitation to Canada arrived, the family didn’t hesitate. 

“Canada was somewhere we always wanted to come to.”

For Siobhan, the result is only part of what matters. Her advice to anyone reading her story is simple.

“Do the best you can,” she says. “Push yourself to your full potential, but you don’t always have to be the best.”

Ten years after being “kidnapped” into a gym she didn’t want to visit, Siobhan is about to step on to an international platform wearing green and gold. Everything except her hair.

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