On Wednesday, Hampton Morris became the first American man to win a weightlifting medal at the Olympics in forty years, while Li Fabin of China successfully defended his Olympic weightlifting championship by winning the men’s 61-kilogram division.
The 31-year-old Li broke the Games snatch record on his third and last try, lifting 143 kilograms (315 pounds), after entering the tournament as the clear favorite to repeat.
Li posted the highest Olympic snatch and overall records in this category three years ago when she won in Tokyo, and it cleared the path for her to earn gold.
Li, already in the lead, closed it with a score of 310 in the clean and jerk after lifting 167 kilograms (368 pounds).
Morris finished at 303, missing out on a world record in the clean and jerk, but he still took home the bronze. Mario Martinez and Guy Carlton were the last American weightlifters to win medals at the Los Angeles Games in 1984.
Thailand’s Theerapong Silachai won the silver medal.
On his first clean and jerk attempt, Morris slid. On his second attempt, the 20-year-old successfully lifted the bar a few feet. He was weighing 172 kg.
Morris trains mostly out of his home gym and is mentored by his father, according to his Team USA bio. The native of Marietta, Georgia, holds 20 records at the youth, junior, and senior levels and has two gold and one silver medal from world championship competitions.
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Prior to the Paris Games, Morris declared, “Weightlifting is the only thing I do. I still don’t have my driver’s license because I decided to spend all of my free time training and doing peripheral things to help me be a better weightlifter.”
Eko Yuli Irawan, an Indonesian weightlifter who has won four Olympic medals and is the oldest competitor in the division at thirty-five, hurt his right hip or leg during his botched final lift.
Having failed to make a lift in the clean and jerk, he hobbled out with assistance, unable to maintain his position as the most decorated Olympian in his own nation.
There are now just five classes in the Paris Games, down from seven divisions in Tokyo, including the 61kg (134.48 pound) class. Unspecified technical maintenance caused the first event to start more than 20 minutes later than scheduled.
