Could a caffeine-fueled 20-year-old from Georgia who doesn’t have a driver’s license and trains out of his family’s garage be at the fore of an American weightlifting resurgence? It might be too early to say, but there’s a smouldering optimism about the US camp which only grew on Wednesday when Hampton Morris became the first men’s lifter from the United States to win an Olympic medal in four decades by taking bronze in the men’s 61kg division.
Morris, the youngest US weightlifter at the Olympics since Cheryl Haworth in 2000, ended a long-running American hoodoo by hoisting a combined weight of 298kg (about 657lb) between the snatch and clean-and-jerk segments of the contest, becoming the first male US lifter to reach the podium since Mario Martinez and Guy Carlton took silver and bronze respectively at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Li Fabin of China won the gold with a combined total of 310kg, becoming the first lifter to win consecutive Olympic titles since Turkey’s Naim Suleymanoglu won three straight from 1988 through 1996, while Theerapong Silachai of Thailand took silver (303kg) in the leadoff event of the five-day weightlifting competition.
A youth world champion in 2021 and junior world champion in 2022, Morris stunned the world at the IWF World Cup in April when he broke Li’s clean-and-jerk world record with a lift of 176kg – or about 388lb – marking the United States’ first world record at the senior level since 1969. But the Olympics are a different beast altogether and Morris’ breakthrough performance Wednesday on the sport’s biggest stage left him overcome by emotion after he was awarded his bronze medal. “It’s amazing that I’m able to leave that kind of mark in the sport,” Morris said. “I’m just in disbelief.”
One of the nine sports on offer at the first modern Olympics in 1896, weightlifting has been included on the program at every Summer Games since then except for three in the early 1900s. And while only two countries have won more golds (16) or overall medals (47) than the United States, only nine of those, including Morris’ bronze, have come since 1968.
But things have been looking up for the US program in recent years. The Americans touched down in Paris having medaled in consecutive Olympic Games thanks to Kate Vibert in 2020 and Sarah Robles in both 2020 and 2016. Morris has made it three on the trot and the US team have another serious medal contender in Olivia Reeves, who will go off among the favorites in the women’s 71kg division on Friday. The 21-year-old from Chattanooga, who started lifting weights doing CrossFit when she was in fourth grade – her mother owned a gym – made a smashing senior debut last year after a decorated junior career, sweeping the golds at the World Cup in April and reaching the podium at a major event for a sixth straight time.
Weightlifting competitions feature two types of lift, each different marriages of technique and raw strength. In the snatch, the bar is lifted with a wide grip from the floor to above the head in one continuous motion. The clean-and-jerk is a two-stage action where the bar is brought up to the top of the chest before being jerked over the head, allowing for heavier loads. While the world championships dole out medals for each of these lifts in addition to the combined total, the Olympics combine the best results from the three snatch and three clean-and-jerk attempts – six attempts in total – with the highest total winning the competition. All of it makes for deeper strategic considerations than meet the eye.
There’s nothing quite like the atmosphere of an Olympic competition, where lifters make their attempts in near-silence interrupted by shouting from the crowd, like a tennis match in which the chair umpire is close to losing control. On Wednesday afternoon, inside the dimly lit exhibition hall where the handball competition was staged last week, Morris got off to a flying start by converting on his first attempt in the snatch at 122kg before improving on his third and final lift at 126kg, just one kilo shy of his personal best.
Sitting in fifth place after the snatch portion, Morris made an uncharacteristic no-lift on his first attempt after his back foot gave way on a slippery competition surface that left his father and coach, Tripp, visibly furious. That prompted Morris to move the bar up to the front of the platform for his second attempt, where he dramatically vaulted into medal position by equalling an Olympic record with a 172kg clean-and-jerk. “I approached the bar knowing I would make it,” said Morris, whose ability to lift three times his weight belies his 135lb frame. “I didn’t have any doubt in my mind I would do it. It’s something I’ve done in training plenty of times. There’s no room for doubt in this sport. Just know you can make it and execute.”
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Having assured himself of a medal, Morris attempted to add four pounds to his own world record with his final lift but came up short. “I knew I had it in me,” he said. “Any other day, I would definitely have a shot at making it. Today I had a shot of making it.”
Coached by his father six days a week almost exclusively out of his family’s converted garage in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, Morris is a coffee aficionado who regularly drinks four espressos and three cold brews in a single day and who owns five different coffee makers, ranging from a French press to a Vietnamese Phin coffee brewer. After Wednesday’s drought-busting medal, he may just be the face of American weightlifting in the run-up to a home Olympics where he will take aim at the country’s first gold medal across either gender since Charles Vinci in 1960 – if Reeves doesn’t get there first on Friday night.