Weightlifting

Weightlifting—often known as Olympic weightlifting—has been around for thousands of years, yet the objective remains the same: the athlete who lifts the most weight wins. Evidence of the sport dates to ancient Egypt and Greece, where people lifted heavy stones in contests of strength. Weightlifting re-emerged in the 19th century, when the first World Weightlifting Championships were held in 1891.

The Olympic weightlifting programme has greatly evolved over time. Since the Montreal 1976 Games, there have been two lifts used in competition: the snatch and the clean and jerk. In the snatch, the bar is lifted from the floor to above the head in one movement. By contrast, the clean and jerk is a two-stage action: the bar is first brought up to the shoulders before being jerked over the head. These extremely demanding exercises require exceptional physical strength and ironclad mental resolve.

Today, competitors perform both lifts three times, and their best result in each lift are combined to determine their overall score. The competitor with the highest total score is declared the winner. Men and women will each compete across five weight classes for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Weightlifting featured at the first modern Olympic Games held in Athens in 1896. Excluded from the Olympic programme for a few editions of the Games (1900, 1908 and 1912), weightlifting was reintroduced in 1920 at the Antwerp Games and has been included ever since. A women’s competition was first held at the Sydney 2000 Games.

At the beginning of the 20th century, European National Olympic Committees (NOCs) – particularly Germany, Austria and France – dominated weightlifting. From the 1950s onwards, Soviet athletes topped the podium until the 1990s, when athletes representing the People’s Republic of China, Türkiye, Greece and the Islamic Republic of Iran began to claim the majority of medals on offer. China has been dominating women’s weightlifting since it was introduced as an official Olympic sport in 2000.