Power ranking every single sport at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics
By Nick Villano
27. Weightlifting
Weightlifting is like finding the person who is the best at training for a sport. Then, we see these insane feats of strength. Isn’t a feat of strength one of the main components of the Olympics? It’s a celebration of the greatest in all aspects of sport. The main aspects of sport are speed and strength. What better way to celebrate strength than to lift weights?
It’s a pretty straight forward competition, which does make it interesting. The person who lifts the most weight wins the gold medal. How more direct can one event become?
After some changes in the early Games, weightlifting is down to two major lifts. There is the clean and jerk, which is the most popular lift. A power clean is one of the most difficult lifts and is usually perfected after months or even years of practice. Even athletes in other sports avoid the power clean and jerk due to its difficulty. The other is the snatch.
Both lifts finish with the barbell lifted well above their head. It’s just the journey there that’s different. For one, it’s two motions. The other one is asking a lifter to get more than 300 lbs above their head in one fell swoop. As anyone who has lifted even 100 pounds above their head can attest, this is incredibly difficult. Upping the ante this way is straight up close to impossible, but these athletes make it happen.