For most people the new year means time in the gym working off Christmas excess. Yet Zoe Smith’s resolution is to pile on the weight in the quest for Olympic glory in 2012.

The 14-year-old weightlifter from southeast London is already Britain’s strongest girl, having lifted three times her own nine-stone bodyweight last year and smashed almost every national record there is. Now she has been named Athlete of the Year in her sport by the British Olympic Association.

The accolade ranked her alongside Sir Chris Hoy, the newly knighted triple Olympic cycling champion, and Andy Murray, Britain's top-ranked tennis player, who received the award in their respective sports.

“To say I was shocked is a bit of an understatement,” she said. “Seeing my name on a list as an equal alongside all the big names from this year’s Olympics was unbelievable. At first I thought there might have been some mistake and was a bit nervous about telling anyone. I was amazingly happy when it sunk in that it was true.”

Miss Smith was too young to compete in Beijing – the age requirement for Olympic weightlifting is 16 – but she is bound for the 2012 Games after shooting to the top of her sport two years after switching from gymnastics.

She started weightlifting aged 12 when she was asked to make up the numbers in a team for the London Youth Games in July 2006. Standing 5ft 2in, she set 98 British records last year and won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Poona, India, in October.

In the 53kg weight category, she holds every junior and senior record except the clean and jerk – a two-part movement of the barbell. Days after her 13th birthday, she lifted 59kg to break the under18 snatch – one fast, uninterrupted movement – record set 11 years previously by Michaela Breeze, Britain’s most successful female weightlifter.

Having moved up to the 58kg category, she now holds every record available to under18 girls.

Her heaviest competitive lift to date is 90kg in the clean and jerk.

Her mother, Niki, 47, said that she had been exceptionally strong from a young age. “She was climbing up door frames as a baby and was great on the monkey bars,” she said.

Heavy going

— The 1896 Athens Games, the first modern Olympic Games, included men’s weightlifting

— Women lifters participated for the first time at the Olympics in Sydney in 2000

— Male competitors weigh between 85 and 105-plus kg. Women compete in different weight categories from 46 to 75-plus kg

— China has long dominated the women’s event, with Thailand and other Asian countries starting to compete

Sources: British Olympic Association/ IOC