Olivia Reeves gained the US’ first Olympic gold medal in weightlifting in 24 years on the Paris Olympics on Friday.
Reeves lifted 117 kilograms (390 kilos) within the snatch and 145kg (320 kilos) within the clear and jerk for a complete of 262kg to beat Mari Leivis Sanchez of Colombia by 5 kilograms within the girls’s 71kg division. Angie Dajomes of Ecuador took the bronze.
Reeves, from Hixson, Tennessee, appeared calm through the competitors, however stated later she had been feeling the nerves. Reeves stated she wished to deal with the Olympics as simply one other occasion, “and I got more nervous than all the others, so it didn’t really work.”
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Through the medal ceremony, Reeves wiped away tears and took deep breaths because the U.S. anthem performed.
“I’ve heard the national anthem before. I’ve been on the podium before,” she stated. “But this is the Olympics, and to be here, be the Olympic champion hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m not quite sure, but I’m trying to process it.”
Reeves selected increased beginning weights than her opponents in each elements of the competitors, and accomplished her first 5 lifts. Her solely failed elevate got here on a 150kg clean-and-jerk try with the gold medal already gained.
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The U.S. final gained an Olympic gold medal in weightlifting in Sydney in 2000, when Tara Nott gained the lightest girls’s division. That was the primary Olympic Video games to incorporate girls’s weightlifting on this system.
“I hope that this can inspire any young girl who wants to do this. I think to be a representative in this sport means a lot, and I’m proud to have that role,” Reeves stated.
Reeves’ gold adopted a historic bronze medal for Hampton Morris on Wednesday, the primary Olympic medal of any variety for a U.S. males’s weightlifter because the 1984 Los Angeles Video games.
Earlier, Karlos Nasar of Bulgaria gained weightlifting gold on the Olympics and broke two world information simply over a yr after a resort sink fell on him and severed his left Achilles tendon.
Nasar was showering the evening earlier than an awards ceremony in Might 2023 when he reached for shampoo and pressed down, inflicting the sink to fall out of the wall and onto him. After present process emergency surgical procedure and lacking six months, he returned to weightlifting in December and set the clear and jerk world document that he surpassed on this occasion.
“I believed, and I imagined in my mind to come here after the accident and to win the Olympic title,” Nasar stated by an interpreter. “It was very difficult because I could not move for months. But I have very strong power to do this.”
The 21-year-old Nasar, a Paris native, lifted 180 kilograms (397 kilos) within the snatch and a world-record 224 kilograms (494 kilos) within the clear and jerk to win the boys’s 89-kilogram division in his Olympic debut with a rating of 404 — additionally a world document.
“This place is very special in my life,” Nasar stated. “I was born here, and I was Olympic champion here.”
Requested about an incident involving a prolonged police chase two years in the past, Nasar didn’t need to focus on it however stated, “It was not the only incident in the last two years for me. … But clearly I grew up a lot in these two years.”
Yeison López of Colombia acquired silver and Antonino Pizzolato of Italy took residence the bronze.
The occasion, merging the 81 and 96 kilograms as a part of a discount of weight courses from Tokyo in 2021, was not for the faint of coronary heart, with a number of weightlifters taking place in ache through the course of the competitors. Karim Abokahla of Egypt grabbed at his proper bicep on two consecutive lifts and acquired medical consideration for a number of minutes for an harm that knocked him out halfway by.
