CCould a caffeinated, driver’s license-free 20-year-old from Georgia, training out of his family’s garage, be the driving force behind a renaissance in American weightlifting? It may be too early to tell, but there’s a simmering optimism about the American camp that only grew on Wednesday when Hampton Morris became the first U.S. male weightlifter to win an Olympic medal in four decades, taking bronze in the men’s 61-kg division.
Morris, the youngest American weightlifter at the Olympics since Cheryl Haworth in 2000, ended a long-running American hoodoo by lifting a combined total of 298 kg (approximately 657 lb) between the snatch and clean-and-jerk segments of the competition, becoming the first American male weightlifter to reach the podium since Mario Martinez and Guy Carlton won silver and bronze, respectively, at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Li Fabin of China won the gold with a combined total of 310 kg (690 lb), becoming the first weightlifter to win consecutive Olympic titles since Turkey’s Naim Suleymanoglu won three in a row from 1988 to 1996, while Theerapong Silachai of Thailand won silver (303 kg) in the leadoff event of the five-day weightlifting competition.
Morris, who was the 2021 Youth World Champion and 2022 Junior World Champion, surprised the world at the IWF World Cup in April when he broke Li’s world record for the punch and thrust with a lift of 176 kg – or about 388 lb – which marked the United States’ first world record at the senior level since 1969. But the Olympics are a different beast, and Morris’ groundbreaking performance on the sport’s biggest stage on Wednesday left him overcome with emotion after being awarded his bronze medal. “It’s amazing that I can make such a mark on the sport,” Morris said. “I just can’t believe it.”
Weightlifting was one of nine sports offered at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, and has been included in every Summer Games since then except for three in the early 1900s. And while only two countries have won more gold (16) or total medals (47) than the United States, only nine of those, including Morris’ bronze, have been achieved since 1968.
But things have improved for the U.S. program in recent years. The Americans landed in Paris on the back of consecutive Olympic medals, with Kate Vibert in 2020 and Sarah Robles in both 2020 and 2016. Morris has made it three in a row, and the U.S. team still has a serious medal contender in Olivia Reeves, who will enter Friday’s women’s 71kg division as the favorite. The 21-year-old from Chattanooga, who began lifting weights with CrossFit in the fourth grade — her mother owned a gym — made a stellar senior debut last year after a decorated junior career that included gold medals at the World Cup in April and reach the podium at a major event for the sixth time in a row.
Weightlifting competitions feature two types of lifts, each with a different combination of technique and raw power. The snatch involves lifting the bar from the floor to overhead with a wide grip in one continuous motion. The clean-and-jerk is a two-phase action that brings the bar to the upper chest before jerking it over the head, allowing for heavier loads. While the world championships award medals for each of these lifts in addition to the combined total, the Olympics combine the best results from the three snatch and three clean-and-jerk attempts—six attempts in all—with the highest total winning the competition. All of this raises deeper strategic considerations than may first appear.
There is nothing quite like the atmosphere of an Olympic competition, where weightlifters attempt their lifts in near silence, punctuated by the shouts of the crowd, like a tennis match where the chair umpire nearly loses control. On Wednesday afternoon, in the dimly lit exhibition hall where last week’s handball match was held, Morris made a flying start by winning his first attempt in the snatch at 122kg, before improving his third and final lift at 126kg, just one kilo shy of his personal best.
Morris, who was in fifth place after the snatch portion, made an uncharacteristic no-lift on his first attempt after his back foot gave way on a slippery competition surface, visibly infuriating his father and coach, Tripp. That prompted Morris to move the bar to the front of the platform for his second attempt, where he dramatically vaulted into medal position by tying an Olympic record with a 172-kg clean-and-jerk. “I walked up to the bar knowing I was going to make it,” said Morris, whose ability to lift three times his own weight belies his 135-lb frame. “There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to do it. It’s something I’ve done many times in training. There’s no room for doubt in this sport. Just know you can do it and go do it.”
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After securing a medal, Morris attempted to add four pounds to his own world record with his final lift, but came up short. “I knew I had it,” he said. “On any other day, I would definitely have a shot at it. Today, I had a shot at it.”
Morris, who is coached six days a week by his father, almost exclusively out of his family’s converted garage in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, is a coffee aficionado who regularly drinks four espressos and three cold brews a day and owns five different coffee makers, ranging from a French press to a Vietnamese Phin. After Wednesday’s drought-breaking medal, he may well be the face of U.S. weightlifting heading into the Olympics on home soil, where he’ll be aiming for the first gold medal for both sexes since Charles Vinci in 1960 — if Reeves doesn’t get there first on Friday night.