But she failed with both lifts and the Ukrainian teenager Iryna Dekha won the 75kg gold.

Of the eight French lifters, male and female, who had competed before Nayo Katchenko, three had failed to register a total, one finished 16th, and none had posted a total good enough for a place on the podium.

With Olympic qualifying points at stake for the women, it will all go down to the penultimate event of the week on Saturday, the +75kg.

France’s men have already qualified but their women must finish in the top six of the non-qualified nations to secure a team place.

With that one women’s event to go they are seventh.

Nayo Katchenko, who won an African Championships bronze medal in 2008, when she competed for Cameroon, had to lift 140kg to beat Dekha, 19, who returned to competition last year after a two-year doping ban.

She did not come close with either attempt and finished European runner-up for the second year in succession.

Natalia Priscepa, of Moldova, was third overall, and the 1-2-3 was identical in the snatch and clean & jerk.

The women’s gold medallist on Thursday night, Nazik Avdalyan, was still trying to contact her husband Erik a day later to tell him of her victory.

Avdalyan, who returned to the podium five years after suffering horrific injuries in a car crash, said he was serving in the Armenian army during the conflict with Azerbaijan in the Karabakh region.

“He doesn’t know I won,” she said.

Her mother, sister, and two-year-old son also missed her triumph, broadcast on state television, she said – because they had gone to church to pray for her.

In the men’s 94kg Poland won their first gold medal of the week when Tomasz Zielinski lifted impressively.

Zielinski, 25, whose elder brother Adrian won the 85kg Olympic title in 2012, made his first five lifts for a winning total of 387kg.

Zygimantas Stanulis, the popular and very noisy Lithuanian, was second.

Stanulis, wearing lime green, screamed and shouted even in the warm-up area before it was his turn to lift, and he won the support of an appreciative crowd.

The bronze went to Russia’s Georgii Kuptsov.

Poland also won a snatch medal. Roman Grela, fourth overall, won the bronze.

In the clean & jerk Zielinski, who failed with his final attempt, finished second to the Russian Egor Klimonov – fifth overall - with Kuptsov third.

The Championships conclude on Saturday with three medal events, the men’s 105kg and +105kg, and the women’s +75kg.