Every year, the President of the United States delivers a State of the Union speech. The title of the speech is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a message about the most important stuff going on in our country at the moment.
 
As I’m writing this, it’s December 2020. I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve had one hell of a year, and as it draws to a close, I thought it might be useful to write a “state of the union” article about the current status of our beloved Olympic weightlifting. There’s a lot going on in our sport, and it affects all of us.
 
There are two primary things we need to look at if we want to understand the present predicament of weightlifting. The first one is easy, because the whole world has fallen victim to it. COVID-19 has altered our lives in awful ways. We’re in the tenth month of the pandemic, and it’s still getting worse. Back in March, I think most of us thought this thing would be gone (or at least neutralized) by this time. But as Christmas approaches, the statistics of the disease are skyrocketing and we’re back under the threat of more lockdowns, cancellations, postponements, etc. Everything has been touched by it, and weightlifting is no exception. So I want to take a look at what we’re currently dealing with as we try to live our weightlifting lives with COVID, and also what we might be up against in the future.
 
The second pickle we’re struggling with is the IWF doping scandal and the looming threat of Olympic removal for our sport. As with COVID, this is something we’ve been living with throughout most of the year. Doping and corruption are as old as the hills in weightlifting, but everything has shifted up to nuclear level since a German documentary film was released last year that exposed it all to the world. The International Olympic Committee has been hitting weightlifting with warnings and reductions all year, and our current Olympic presence has been dropped down to 120 total athlete spots and only five contested weight classes per gender in Paris 2024 (and we’re still under “provisional” status for the Paris Games, which means the IWF is reserving the option to terminate us completely).
 
It might not seem like it at first, but both of these issues affect all of us. This is true even if you do this sport at a very low level that’s miles away from the Olympic Games. You’re all coaches and/or athletes, which means you’ve chosen to make this sport a huge part of your lives. Considering this, I think it’s logical to conclude that you should have the strongest possible understanding of it, top to bottom. So let’s call this the 2020 Olympic Weightlifting State of the Union.
 
COVID-19 and Olympic weightlifting
 
There are two main ways our weightlifting lives have been hampered by COVID. The first one is gym closures, and the second one is competitions going online.
 
A few months ago, when the COVID statistics were low, it looked like gym closures were a thing of the past. We all remember the lockdowns in most states back in the March-April time period, and I’m sure some of you were affected by it. Those of you who are gym owners or coaches were right on the front lines, because this whole thing was a threat to how you make a living. Once the government tells you that you have to close down your operation, it gets scary.
 
Then we progressed into the fall, and the COVID numbers in most states started to improve. But now, they’re back on the rise, and conversations have started again about lockdowns. Some states have already enacted them. Gym owners get their businesses jeopardized, and lifters get their training threatened.
 
Is this the way it’s going to go in the coming months…or years? A constant fluctuation where gyms are closed, and then open, and then closed, and then open again, etc.? Should you worry about getting COVID at the gym? Should you just transition to training at home full time? If you’re a gym owner, what the hell should you do?
 
Obviously, I don’t have answers to all of these. Based on what I’ve heard in recent months, it doesn’t sound like gyms have been major sources of COVID spreading. We don’t turn on the news at night and hear stories about superspreading outbreaks that have been traced back to your local CrossFit box. Plus, the disease is so widespread at this point, it’s difficult to pin down where somebody got it. A gym patron tests positive for COVID, but does that mean he got it at the gym? He could have gotten it at the gas station.
 
And listen, I know people have different beliefs and opinions about COVID. Some people are legitimately scared of it, while others think it’s basically a hoax. There’s no way to put out a set of guidelines or ideas that will make everybody happy.
 
Personally, I think a cautious-but-not-paralyzed approach is the right one for gym owners, coaches, and athletes. Training at a gym is a voluntary activity, and people can make their own decisions about whether they’re comfortable in the environment. Anybody who wants to stay home can stay home. So I don’t think gyms should go into paralysis over COVID, and I definitely don’t think they should be forced to close their doors. Obviously, this is just my opinion. Take it for what it’s worth. If you disagree, that’s fine.
 
But that’s just the gym life. What about competitions? For crying out loud, over the last six months we’ve seen the National Championship, Masters Nationals, Masters Pan Ams, the American Open, and Youth Nationals held…online. USA Weightlifting was confronted with the reality of not being able to hold major meets in the normal in-person way, so what did they do? Did they throw up their hands and tell the athletes, “Sorry! Nothing we can do, see you in 2021 maybe!”
 
Nope. The federation stepped up and found a way to make sure this country’s athletes still had SOMETHING to compete in. I can’t say enough about how impressed and grateful I am that this happened. Just stop and think for a second about the level of innovation, creative thinking, determination, and commitment it takes to switch the entire competitive format of a sport on three months’ notice. It would have been no problem for the federation to take the easy way out and just shelve everything. They would have had every justification in the world. But instead, they took a “failure is not an option” position and fought to make sure we still held these championship competitions and gave our athletes something to live for.
 
My message to the weightlifting community is this: support online competition. Participate in them. Say good things about them. Offer up your gym space to help make them happen. Hopefully, they’ll be a short-lived phenomenon. We all know we want to be back on a real platform in a real meet. That’s the goal, and it’ll eventually go that way. But for now, if you’re critical or negative towards online competitions, shame on you. Our federation fought and bled to keep us competitively active. Bravo to them.
 
The IWF scandals and weightlifting
 
And then we move to the IWF. For the sake of brevity in this article, I’m not going to make this a refresher course on the current goings-on in weightlifting. Instead, I want to drive straight towards the big questions.
 
1. Is weightlifting going to get thrown out of the Olympics?
 
Answer: It’s definitely possible. The International Olympic Committee has spent years warning our sport to clean its act up, or else. But the doping and corruption is so deep and widespread, it’s like standing in the doorway of a crack house and shouting, “Okay, all of you get clean and sober! I’ll be back in a month to check in on you!” The administration and executive board of the IWF is entrenched in the crooked behavior that the IOC is warning us about, so nothing has been cleaned up. When longtime IWF President Tamas Ajan was ousted several months ago and American officials Ursula Papandrea and Phil Andrews were promoted to the top tier IWF spots, it genuinely looked like the tide was turning. But then the IWF board voted them both out and replaced them with officials from the worst doping countries in the world.
 
All of this leaves us in a position where our sport looks irreparably damaged. In other words, it’s too corrupt to be fixed. The IOC thinks the best idea might be to simply remove us from the Olympic program. It hasn’t happened yet, but it might.
 
2. Would Olympic removal destroy the sport?
 
Answer: No, it wouldn’t. And the reason it wouldn’t is simple: there are still millions of people in the world who want to be weightlifters, Olympics or not. If you think about it, almost all the weightlifters in the world have absolutely no chance of making it to the Olympics. That’s not a negative statement. It’s simply mathematics. For the vast majority of people in this sport, the Olympics isn’t on the radar.
 
These people will still want to be weightlifters whether it’s in the Olympics or not. The desire to do snatches and clean and jerks won’t go away if we get the boot, so the sport will definitely survive. It’ll just become more like powerlifting, strongman, and bodybuilding. Those sports aren’t in the Olympics, and they’re alive and well. That’s what will happen to weightlifting if the IOC drops the hammer.
But despite all those things being true, trust me—we want to stay in the Olympics. For all its flaws, the Olympics are still magical. It’s the most special sporting event in the world, and it would be a horrific blow to lose it. ALL of us should want weightlifting to stay in the Games. I don’t think it would kill out sport, but it would damage it in ways we literally can’t even comprehend or predict.
 
3. Would the average gym rat lifter/coach be affected if we lose the Olympics?
Answer: Probably not a ton, but there’s no way to know for sure yet. Weightlifting would definitely become a less global sport over time, because many of the top weightlifting countries of Europe and Asia only get funding because it’s an Olympic sport. If we lose the Olympics, their programs will likely start to dwindle. That will decrease the general popularity and awesomeness of the sport, which will likely have a ripple effect. Once again, would all of this mean no Olympics = no more weightlifting? No, it wouldn’t. But think about it, do you want this sport to be 30% less awesome and popular than it currently is? The answer should be no, for all of us.
 
And all the rest
 
Those are the two scariest parts of the current weightlifting era. And in a funny way, we can’t really control either of them. We can’t vaporize COVID from the face of the earth, and we can’t erase the decades of IWF corruption that are bringing us to the brink of disaster.
 
So, what do we do? Many of you are problem-solver personalities, like I am. That means when you’re faced with a challenge, you immediately think, “Okay, what can we do to fix this?” That’s where this conversation gets difficult because, as I said, most of us really can’t DO anything about this stuff.
 
That’s where we have to go all the way back to the basics and focus on the only thing we can control: how we deal with the problems in front of us. If we can’t eliminate them, we have to learn to overcome them.
 
That means we simply have to persevere. We have to dig in. Individually, we all have to find the strength within ourselves to overcome anything that gets thrown at us, you know? Some of you have dealt with awful things in your lives. I don’t know you personally, but I know how life goes. Abuse, bankruptcy, divorce, illness, mental issues, etc. Many of us have stared these horrors straight in the eyes. And even though we had good people around us who could provide help and support, we all learned one thing: at the end of the day, it all comes down to how much internal strength you have.
 
If you really want to be a successful weightlifter, COVID won’t stop you. The IOC won’t stop you. Loss of the Olympics won’t stop you. 2020 WON’T STOP YOU. It’s funny to think about it this way, but we’re all the same boat right now. And as former Olympic champion Yuri Zacharevich once said, “There is a time in every one’s life when you must clench your teeth together and your fate only depends on your determination.”
 
Think about those words. Remember them. Hold on to them. Always believe that your life and outcomes are up to YOU, and nothing else. This belief might not solve all the problems of the world, but you don’t have a prayer without it. Let’s all hang in there, folks. We’ll make it through this one way or another.