The U.S. Olympic weightlifting team is its largest in 25 years — the maximum four men and four women — and could win its most medals since the 1960 Rome Games.
All four women rank in the top three in their divisions in global Olympic qualifying, when excluding lifters who won’t be at the Games due to roster size limits or doping sanctions.
Kate Nye (76kg) and Sarah Robles (+87kg) both won world championships in this Olympic cycle, becoming the first Americans to do so since 1994.
Nye won her world title in 2019 at age 20, after spending more than half her life in gymnastics and three years after dropping CrossFit to focus on lifting.
Robles, 32, earned the lone U.S. weightlifting medal in Rio (bronze) among the four lifters.
Mattie Rogers (87kg) took silver behind Nye at 2019 Worlds in the non-Olympic 71kg division. Jourdan Delacruz (49kg) broke American records in winning the Pan American Championships last month.
LIST: All U.S. athletes currently qualified for Tokyo Olympics
C.J. Cummings (73kg), the South Carolinian dubbed “the LeBron James of weightlifting” as a 15-year-old prodigy, will make his Olympic debut at age 21 as the youngest U.S. Olympic weightlifter since 2000.
Cummings is the lone U.S. man ranked in the top five in any division in global Olympic qualifying. He’s second at 73kg, looking to become the first American man to earn an Olympic weightlifting medal since 1984.
The team is rounded out by fellow Olympic rookies Harrison Maurus (81kg), Wes Kitts (109kg) and Caine Wilkes (+109kg).
The U.S. last won more than two weightlifting medals at an Olympics in 1960.
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