Paris Olympics: Olivia Reeves wins USA’s first women’s weightlifting gold medal in 24 years

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Olivia Reeves hoisted the United States to its first Olympic weightlifting gold medal in 24 years on Thursday, winning the women’s 71kg (157 pounds) competition.

Reeves set an Olympic record on Friday in the snatch, lifting 117 kg (258 pounds). In total, she lifted 262 kg (578 pounds) to beat out Colombia’s Mari Leivis Sanchez and Ecuador’s Angie Paola Palacios Dajomes for gold.

The last women’s American weightlifter to win gold was Tara Nott-Cunningham at the 2000 Sydney Games. That was the first Olympics at which women’s weightlifting was in competition. Earlier in the week, the U.S. men earned their first weightlifting medal since 1984 with Hampton Morris winning bronze.

Reeves, 21, is a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and picked up weightlifting as an early adolescent at the CrossFit gym her parents owned. She previously won a gold medal in the 71kg at the 2024 IWF World Cup and bronze at both the 2023 World Championships and Pan American Championships.

“It’s incredibly exciting because she is having all this success and she’s having it at such a young age,” former Olympic weightlifter Cara Heads Slaughter told NPR. “She’s on track to be the best U.S. weightlifter in women’s history.”