Olivia Reeves wins first U.S. weightlifting Olympic gold medal in 24 years : NPR

Olivia Reeves, of the usA., performs a snatch in the course of the ladies’s weightlifting 71kg on Friday on the South Paris Enviornment in the course of the Paris Summer time Olympics. She gained the U.S.’s first weightlifting gold in 24 years.

Lars Baron/Getty Photos


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Lars Baron/Getty Photos

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PARIS — The drought is over.

U.S. weightlifter Olivia Reeves gained a gold medal in her Olympic debut, bringing the U.S. group its first gold since earlier than Reeves was born.

Reeves, 21 and a pupil on the College of Tennessee at Chattanooga, was extensively favored to win the gold medal after a string of spectacular performances in worldwide competitors. The final time the U.S. introduced dwelling a gold medal was in 2000, on the Sydney Video games. That was the primary Olympic Video games that included ladies’s weightlifting as a part of this system.

Cara Heads-Slaughter, who was a member of the U.S. ladies’s weightlifting Olympic group in 2000, instructed NPR that Reeves is “on monitor to be one of the best U.S. weightlifter in ladies’s historical past.”

In competitors, athletes get three makes an attempt at every elevate. Their heaviest snatch and heaviest clear and jerk mixed makes up their whole. And the lifter with the best whole wins. Reeves’ totaled 262 kilograms, or roughly 577 kilos.

She additionally set an Olympic document together with her 117 kilogram snatch, or roughly 258 kilos. Although Reeves had already gained the gold medal, she tried a 150 kilogram clear and jerk to set a brand new Olympic document in that elevate too. However she couldn’t full the elevate.

Mari Leivis Sanchez of Colombia took dwelling the silver medal. Ecuador’s Angie Paola Palacios gained bronze.

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