The US once dominated weightlifting before a long period in the doldrums. The balance of power could be shifting again though
Could a caffeine-fueled 20-year-old from Georgia who doesn’t have a driver’s license and trains out of his family’s garage be at the fore of an American weightlifting resurgence? It might be too early to say, but there’s a smouldering optimism about the US camp which only grew on Wednesday when Hampton Morris became the first men’s lifter from the United States to win an Olympic medal in four decades by taking bronze in the men’s 61kg division.
Morris, the youngest US weightlifter at the Olympics since Cheryl Haworth in 2000, ended a long-running American hoodoo by hoisting a combined weight of 298kg (about 657lbs) between the snatch and clean-and-jerk segments of the contest, becoming the first male US lifter to reach the podium since Mario Martinez and Guy Carlton took silver and bronze respectively at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Li Fabin of China won the gold with a combined total of 310kg, becoming the first lifter to win consecutive Olympic titles since Turkey’s Naim Suleymanoglu won three straight from 1988 through 1996, while Theerapong Silachai of Thailand took silver (303kg) in the leadoff event of the five-day weightlifting competition.
