At the 2023 European Weightlifting Championships she won the gold in clean and jerk and the bronze in the 64 kg total category.

Smith took up weightlifting aged 12, when she was at a gym training as a gymnast and was invited to try lifting; she subsequently represented her borough at the London Youth Games.

By 2018, a shoulder injury, the end of centralised funding for weightlifting in the UK, and the loss of her sponsorship, led to Smith moving back in with her parents and taking a job as a barista.

[11] Andrew Callard, who was forming a team for the London Youth Games, was in the building and was seeking female competitors for weightlifting at the competition.

[8] She was selected for the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games, at which she was the youngest member of the English team, and won the gold medal in the 53 kg category.

[11] Aged 15, Smith finished sixth at the 2009 European Junior Championships (for competitors up to 20 years old), a result that John Goodbody of The Sunday Times wrote "provided further evidence of her immense potential".

[23] In December 2010, British Weight Lifting paused her £550-a-year funding,[23] arguing that she was overweight and not adequately committed to her training; her appeal against the decision was rejected.

[28] Competing at a major event in the 63 kg category for the first time, Smith finished ninth at the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships.

[32][33] Around 2018, Smith relocated to the Midlands and, having paused her education while training for the 2012 Olympics, joined Loughborough College to study for A-levels in biology, psychology, and environmental science.

[27] In 2018, Ben Bloom wrote in The Daily Telegraph that since 2014 Smith had become "a sporting nobody; a beacon of talent that faded away into a foggy memory of seemingly unfulfilled promise".

[27] As UK Sport had decided to cut funding for weightlifting in 2016, Smith launched a crowdfunding appeal in July 2018, seeking to raise £10,000 to help her qualify for the 2020 Olympics.

[52] In the first episode, which was in an Elizabethan-era setting, Smith cried as Kirstie Alley and Fern Britton were peeling the skin from a boar's skull.