Many of you are weightlifting fans, in addition to being athletes and/or coaches yourself. You’re actively involved in the sport in your own way, but you probably also keep current on the top competition results from around the world. That means most of you likely know what the US weightlifting team did at the 2019 Pan Am Championships in April.
 
For those of you who might not know what I’m talking about, let me give you a quick recap. In April 2019, Team USA traveled to Guatemala to compete against the best countries in the western hemisphere at the Pan Am Championship, which is one of the top international competitions in the world every year. It’s a highlight event for US weightlifting, ranking only behind the World Championships and Olympic Games in prestige. We’ve been sending our top lifters to the Pan Ams for decades, and we’ve always had solid successes. There have been multiple Pan Am Champions and medalists from the United States over the years, battling on the platform against the always-game Canadians, tough South American countries like Colombia and Venezuela, and traditional powerhouse Cuba. The US has consistently been in the medal hunt at this meet for a long time.
 
But in 2019, everything was different. To state it as bluntly as possible, Team USA absolutely kicked the living hell out of everybody and completely dominated. American lifters won 43 medals, broke 51 World, Pan American, and American Records, and won both the men’s and women’s team championships. Best Lifter awards went to US lifters CJ Cummings and Kate Nye. From the USA Weightlifting website: “Team USA took nearly half of the Pan American titles as eight out of 20 team members were named Pan American Champions. 40% of the 2019 Pan American champions are from Team USA. Alyssa Ritchey, Jourdan Delacruz, CJ Cummings, Kate Nye, D’Angelo Osorio, Wes Kitts, Caine Wilkes, and Sarah Robles all earned the top spot in their body weight category. 17 of Team USA’s athletes won medals for a total of 22 gold, 12 silver and nine bronze.”
 
Nobody has ever seen this level of dominance at an international competition from the United States, at least not since the 1950s, when most of the world wasn’t heavily involved in the sport yet and Europe was still recovering from World War II. American lifters have never lifted these kinds of weights before. CJ Cummings snatched 153 kg and clean and jerked 191 kg in the 73 kg class (he’s 18 years old). Kate Nye snatched 110 kg and clean and jerked 135 kg in the 71 kg class. Wes Kitts clean and jerked 223 kg and totaled 399 kg in the 109 kg class to break the legendary Wes Barnett’s records, which stood since 1996. Jordan Delacruz snatched 91 kg and clean and jerked 116 kg in the 55 kg class. And we could go on and on with more just like these. People…these numbers are staggering.
 
What I want to do in this article is answer a simple question…WHY? Why is US weightlifting so much better now than it ever has been? What’s the reason for the drastic improvement? What’s going on in our country that’s elevating our international performance to this never-seen-before level? There has to be a reason, right? Improvement and success like this don’t happen by accident. There must be something behind it.
 
I’ve been heavily involved in US weightlifting for over 30 years. I’ve seen the whole arc we’ve traveled from mediocre to elite. I think I can give you a handful of factors that have led to this, so let’s take a look.
 
The List
 
People usually want to find ONE reason when they talk about fantastic successes (or failures). Any time a country achieves world supremacy, like Russia and China have done for so long, everybody wants to be able to point at one specific thing that causes it. Likewise, when a championship program collapses and turns into a doormat, as Bulgaria and Greece have done, we all want to know the reason for it (“reason” singular, not plural). People like things to be simple, so they love the idea that these phenomenons can be boiled down to one cause.
 
It doesn’t work like that. When a program succeeds, there are many reasons. When a program fails, there are many reasons. It’s never just ONE thing, and this holds true for US weightlifting’s rise to power in recent years. So let me give you a list of the primary factors involved in the big change:
 
More athletes
 
Many of us have been saying it for years—the main problem in US weightlifting was always simple numbers. We didn’t have enough weightlifters in this country. China has almost a million registered weightlifters. Russia probably has similar numbers. Back when I started competing in the late 80s, I think the total enrollment of USAW was somewhere around 3,500. It’s not complicated, folks. Let’s say two armies show up to a battlefield: one of them has 500 soldiers, and the other one has 10,000. Which one is going to win that battle? Sure, the smaller army might have a chance if they’re tough as nails and the bigger army is weak and untrained. But the weightlifting programs in China and Russia aren’t weak and untrained. They’re gigantic AND supremely prepared. We never had a chance against them. However, the last 10 years has seen a massive population explosion in US weightlifting. We still don’t have a million, but we’ve got several thousand more than we used to. So if that small army with 500 soldiers had 8,000 reinforcements sent in to fight with them, would they have a better chance against the other army of 10,000? Of course they would. I know this sounds simple, but that’s because it IS simple. You’ve got a better chance at success with a larger force working together.
 
More coaches
 
The population explosion hasn’t just brought in thousands of lifters. There’s been a spillover effect into coaching. Once again, let’s go back to when I started lifting. Back in the 80s and 90s, it wasn’t easy to find a good coach. Honestly, there were really only about a dozen coaches in the United States who had the credentials and expertise to build a weightlifter up to the international level. I started my career in Arizona, and I had to move all the way to Washington to get to the coach who could take me to the top. Fortunately, it’s a much different landscape now. We’ve got a bigger pool of coaches in the US who have proven their ability to develop outstanding lifters. Aspiring athletes don’t have to move halfway across the country anymore. Sure, we’ve still got some lifters who relocate far and wide because they’ve got a specific coach they want to work with. But it’s not like it used to be. Nowadays, athletes relocate because of preference. Back in my day, we relocated because we usually had no choice.
 
CrossFit
 
CrossFit is where the population explosion started, and it’s still a huge part of our rising success. You could easily make a case that CrossFit is the biggest piece of the puzzle when we look at the reasons for US weightlifting’s improvement. Most of our top athletes and coaches over the past 10 years have been connected to CrossFit, in some way. Many of our stars, like Mattie Rogers, started out as CrossFit athletes before transitioning to weightlifting. Lots of our best coaches run their programs in CrossFit boxes. CrossFit has been responsible for exposing more people to the Olympic lifts than anything else in the history of the sport, and I think we should all give credit where it’s due. Without CrossFit, none of this amazing stuff would have happened. Plain and simple.
 
Financial opportunity
 
With thousands more members contributing yearly dues to USA Weightlifting, along with the growing sponsorship opportunities of private companies that are investing in the sport, American lifters have more opportunity to make money now than they’ve had in the past. Many of our top competitors are receiving monthly stipends that pay their bills. That means they don’t have to work, which means they can train full-time. This part of the equation isn’t complicated. Let’s say you’ve got two weightlifters of equal ability competing against each other. One of them has been able to devote his whole life to his lifting, and the other one has had to juggle training with a part-time job. Which one would you put your money on? When you offer paychecks, you’re going to attract more talented athletes (look at the NFL and NBA if you want proof of that). And if the paychecks allow those talented athletes the opportunity to fully commit to their sport, the results are going to be huge. That’s where we’re at now, and it’s paying off on the platform.
 
International drug testing
 
I can’t resist the urge to sit back and chuckle when I write about this one, because I’ve been saying for years that if you took the drugs away from the top lifters in the world and made them compete clean...they wouldn’t be any better than our top US lifters. Many people disagreed with that, but we’ve got a proof-in-the-pudding situation going on now. Take a look at the results of the 2019 European Championships, which took place just a couple of weeks before the Pan Ams, and compare our US results against the top doping countries of the past. We all know countries like Russia, Turkey, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, and several others have had to scale back their drug use over the last three years because they got hammered with suspensions and sanctions during the big doping scandal of 2014-16. Now that their lifters aren’t juiced to the gills anymore, they’re putting up the same weights (or lower) than Team USA. Seriously, get on the IWF website and compare the 2019 Pan Ams and Europeans. We’re beating many of these countries now. There are still countries getting away with rampant doping, like China and Iran, but most of the other countries that have had their drug programs gutted are no better than our US lifters at the moment. The numbers don’t lie.
 
Leadership
 
We’ve got the best leadership we’ve ever had in USA Weightlifting right now, and I’m talking about one name in particular: Phil Andrews. I don’t mean to disrespect any of the past presidents or CEOs of USAW, because we’ve had good people in those positions who I respect very much. But we’ve never seen anybody like Phil. The moves he’s made, the programs he’s developed, the political skill he’s shown in the IWF arena, the tireless commitment he’s made to supporting our entire American weightlifting scene from top to bottom, his regular presence on social media and his complete refusal to act rudely to anybody…I’m blown away by this guy. And obviously, he’s had a ton of help from other good people too. Longtime US veterans like Mike Gattone have joined forces with newcomers like Pedro Meloni and the legendary Pyrros Dimas, along with a fantastic national office staff. I’m continually astounded at the talent and commitment I see from these people, and we should all be grateful for them.
 
Greater exposure thorough the internet
 
A big part of the brushfire growth we’ve seen in US weightlifting has been the simple fact that it’s much more publicly visible than ever because of the internet. Twenty years ago, there was almost no way for the general public to discover our sport. There were no CrossFit gyms. We weren’t on television (except for the Olympics every four years). The internet was just beginning, so things like livestreams weren’t available. We were an Olympic sport, but we existed almost entirely underground. Nowadays, people can get online and watch, follow, read, learn, interact, and basically immerse themselves in weightlifting. Every big meet is livestreamed. Top lifters can be followed all over social media. You can find 10 CrossFit gyms in any city that have Olympic lifting programs. More people than ever are finding weightlifting and falling in love with it, which leads me to this next one…
 
National atmosphere
 
The excitement and success of our US lifters is creating a palpable feeling of pride and enthusiasm throughout every corner of the sport. Our top lifters have giant fan followings. Companies like Nike are making weightlifting equipment. Young lifters are diving into the sport because they want to be the next Harrison Maurus or Jenny Arthur. Being an American lifter isn’t a badge of shame at the international level like it was 20 years ago, when our best competitors routinely finished 19^th at the World Championships because the first through 17^th place finishers were loaded up on juice and getting away with it. We’re having success now, and you know the old adage: success breeds success.
 
In conclusion
 
Some of you might be reading this and saying, “Wait! You forgot about ______ !” You’re thinking of other components of USA Weightlifting’s newfound accomplishment that I might not have mentioned. So let me openly state that there are plenty of things I could have added to this list if I wanted the article to be 30 pages long. As I said before, there are always multiple reasons for success or failure. The ones I’ve listed here are just the main ones, as I see it. We could definitely go further, for sure.
 
Here’s the bottom line: salty old veterans like me have been waiting a long time for this. When I think back about the great lifters of my generation, like Tommy Gough and Tim McRae, I always think about how difficult it was for them. There was no money, no recognition, no appreciation, and no respect from the public. There was almost no reason to commit your life to weightlifting in this country aside from pure burning desire. And even when you put up the greatest performances in US history, like Gough totaling 367.5 kg in the 91 kg class at the 1996 Olympics, you still finished with low placement and zero gratitude for your accomplishment. It was a rough time, and you had to fight the urge to feel bitter.
 
Now, it’s different. I know we’ve still got plenty of struggles in American weightlifting, and it’s not like we’ve toppled China or beaten Lasha Talakhadze yet. We’re still fighting an uphill battle, and there are plenty of challenges still looming on the horizon. But there’s hope now. There’s pride. There’s respect. There’s opportunity. Everybody who’s in the game these days should enjoy the hell out of it, and CONTRIBUTE! Even if your contribution is just paying your USAW dues, lifting in local meets, helping coach people at your CrossFit, or congratulating other lifters on Facebook. Every one of these things is valuable, no matter how insignificant it might seem on the surface. We’re all on the same team.
 
We’ve got the ball rolling, people. Let’s all find some way, however big or small, to chip in and build on the success we had in Guatemala. We’re on the threshold of something huge. Let’s burn this mother down.