Weightlifting Preview

Since breaking its 16-year Olympic medal drought at the Olympic Games Rio 2016, the U.S. weightlifting team has only improved, scoring medals, world records and team championships up and down the International Weightlifting Federation’s competition calendar. The U.S. now heads into this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo with an opportunity to land on the medal stand multiple times. With a full team of four men and four women, Team USA is sending its largest weightlifting contingent to the Games since 1996, and Americans are expected to be competitive in several weight divisions.

The U.S. team is led by Sarah Robles (+87 kg./192 lbs.), who won a bronze medal at the Rio Games. Joining her in Tokyo will be Jourdan Delacruz at 49kg. (108 lbs.), Katherine Nye at 76 kg. (167 lbs.) and Mattie Rogers at 87 kg. (192 lbs.) on the women's side. The men are C.J. Cummings at 73 kg. (161 lbs.), Harrison Maurus at 81 kg. (179 lbs.), Wes Kitts at 109 kg. (240 lbs.) and Caine Wilkes at +109 kg. (+240 lbs.).

Team USA hasn’t won more than one weightlifting medal at the same Olympic Games since the Olympic Games Sydney 2000, where Tara Nott Cunningham won the first women’s weightlifting gold medal in history and Cheryl Haworth took bronze in the +75 kg. women’s category. An American man hasn’t won an Olympic medal in weightlifting since the late Mario Martinez took home the superheavyweight silver at the Olympic Games Los Angeles 1984. Team USA weightlifting will look to end those droughts on the competition platform at the Tokyo Games.

Updated on June 29, 2021. For more information, contact the sport press officer here.

• Bigger hasn’t always been better for Team USA, as the last time a U.S. Olympic wrestling team had so many members was the 10-person team that competed in Atlanta in 1996. The team was shut out of medals that year. Historically speaking, Team USA is still one of the strongest countries in Olympic weightlifting with the third most medals all time.

• After a year of inconsistent training opportunities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, USA Weightlifting planned a controlled bubble environment in Hawaii to give athletes the best possible place to prepare for the Games. The team will leave directly from Hawaii to Tokyo to hit the ground running.

• Since the Rio Games, the wider sport of weightlifting has worked to level the playing field for all athletes by intensifying its fight against doping with the number of potential quota spots delegated to each nation depending upon its recent doping history.

• A bronze medalist at the Olympic Games Rio 2016, Sarah Robles will be back at Olympic Games for the third consecutive time. Robles, who turns 33 in Tokyo, won the title in the +90 kg. category at the 2017 IWF Weightlifting World Championships in Anaheim, California.


• Reigning junior world champion, and holder of dozens of national, continental and world records, Clarence “C.J.” Cummings will be competing on his first Olympic team. The 21-year-old, who has won the IWF Junior World Championships each of the last four years, holds 23 American records and three junior world records.


• Katherine Nye is the reigning world champion in the 71 kg. category after a meteoric rise in the sport of weightlifting since 2018. At 20 years old, she set the junior world record in the snatch at the 2019 world championships. Now 22, Nye hopes to add Olympic gold to her world championship gold. 

• July 24, 2021: Olympic weightlifting gets underway with the women’s 49 kg. competition
• July 25, 2021: Men’s 61 kg. and 67 kg.
• July 26, 2021: Women’s 55 kg.
• July 27, 2021: Women’s 59 kg. and 64 kg.
• July 28, 2021: Men’s 73 kg.
• July 31, 2021: Men’s 81 kg. and 96 kg.
• August 1, 2021: Women’s 76 kg.
• August 2, 2021: Women’s 87 kg. and +87 kg.
• August 3, 2021: Men’s 109 kg.
• August 4, 2021: Men’s +109 kg.