PARIS (AP) — Hampton Morris doesn’t have a driver’s license. He does have an Olympic bronze medal.
The 20-year-old who trains in his storage at house in Marietta, Georgia, on Wednesday grew to become the primary U.S. males’s weightlifter to take house a medal of any coloration on the Video games in 4 a long time.
Narrowly lacking out on a world file that may have gotten him silver, Morris adopted Mario Martinez and Man Carlton from Los Angeles in 1984 as the latest American males to medal on the Olympics.
“It’s superb that I’m capable of go away that sort of mark within the sport,” Morris mentioned after ending third within the males’s 61-kilogram division. “I’m simply in disbelief.”
Li Fabin of China defended his Olympic weightlifting title after getting in because the overwhelming favourite to repeat. The 31-year-old set a Video games snatch file by lifting 143 kilograms (315 kilos) on his third and remaining try, paving the best way for gold when he bought to 167 kilograms (368 kilos) within the clear and jerk for a rating of 310.
“It was a clean competitors,” Li mentioned via an interpreter. “I adopted the directions from my staff, and I easily gained the gold medal.”
Li grew to become the primary weightlifter with back-to-back Olympic titles since Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey gained three in a row from 1988-96. Theerapong Silachai of Thailand bought the silver for medal at 303.
China defended one other gold medal hours later when Hou Zhihui gained the ladies’s 49-kilogram division. Hou set an Olympic clear and jerk file at 117 kilograms on her third and remaining try to go Mihaela Cambei of Romania by one level, 206-205.
Cambei earned silver in her nation’s return to the Video games following its ban from Tokyo in 2021 for previous doping circumstances, and Thailand’s Surodchana Khambao was at 200 for bronze. American Jourdan Delacruz was fifth.
Morris, who’s coached by his father, Tripp, bought emotional with the bronze medal hanging round his neck when he started speaking about what his mom, Anne Marie, and his sister, Etta, surrender so he can carry at such a excessive degree. His grandmother Debbie drives him to bodily remedy each week.
“I don’t have wherever else to go, so I by no means had any actual must get my driver’s license,” Morris mentioned. “I’m planning to get it very quickly. I’ve just about discovered methods to drive. I simply haven’t taken the check but.”
That may be a short-term aim. Doing higher in Los Angeles in 2028 — in all probability transferring up a weight class subsequent time — is for down the road.
Till now, his precedence was getting on the rostrum in Paris, one thing that was threatened when he slipped on his first clear and jerk. USA Gymnastics senior director of sport efficiency Mike Gattone, standing close by, mentioned, “That’s the third man I’ve seen slip on that platform.”
Morris moved the bar ahead for his second try and was profitable on the 172 kilogram (379 pound) carry that put him in medal place at 298. Locked right into a medal, he went for a clear and jerk world file try of 178 kilograms (392 kilos) and got here up simply wanting finishing it.
“I knew I had it in me,” mentioned Morris, the youngest U.S. weightlifter on the Olympics since Cheryl Haworth in 2000. “Some other day, I might undoubtedly have a shot at making it. Right this moment I had a shot of constructing it.”
4-time Olympic medalist Eko Yuli Irawan of Indonesia, the oldest weightlifter within the class at age 35, injured his proper hip or leg on his unsuccessful remaining carry. He limped off with help after failing to make a carry within the clear and jerk, stopping him from extending his lead as his nation’s most embellished Olympian.
Copyright 2024 The Related Press. All rights reserved.