Olivia Reeves won her first world weightlifting title on Wednesday, four months after winning the United States’ first Olympic gold medal in weightlifting in 24 years.
The 21-year-old from Chattanooga, who started lifting weights at the CrossFit gym her mother owned when she was in fourth grade, won the 71kg division at world championships in Manama, Bahrain, on Wednesday. She totaled 267kg (588lb) between the snatch and the clean and jerk, edging Jong Chun-Hui of North Korea (262kg) and Yang Qiuxia of China (261lb).
Reeves, who became the youngest US lifter to win Olympic gold in 68 years, became the first American lifter to win Olympic and world titles since Ike Berger did the double in 1958, according to NBC.
It was the first medal for the United States at this year’s worlds. North Korea lead the table with eight gold medals through 11 events with China, Thailand and the US each winning one.
Reeves’ gold at the Paris Olympics followed the historic bronze medal for 20-year-old Hampton Morris, the first Olympic medal of any kind for a US men’s weightlifter since the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
One of the nine sports on offer at the first modern Olympics in 1896, weightlifting has been included on the program at every Summer Games since then except for three in the early 1900s. And while only two countries have won more golds (17) or overall medals (46) than the United States, only 10 of those, including Reeves and Morris in Paris, have come since 1968.
But there are hopes about the US program that Reeves and Morris could be at the fore of a weightlighting resurgence going into the 2028 LA Olympics.
