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The 2024 IWF World Cup continues to deliver on its promise of being a spectacular and star-studded weightlifting competition. The Cup, which runs from Mar. 31 to Apr. 11 in Phuket, Thailand, is the last qualifier event before the Paris Olympics begin this August.
Team USA’s Olivia Reeves was the latest athlete to make headlines with a personal-record-setting performance. On Sunday, Apr. 7, during the Women’s 71-kilogram Group A event, Reeves won gold medals across the board with a 118-kilogram snatch (260.1 pounds), a 150-kilogram clean & jerk (330.6 pounds), and a 268-kilogram Total, or 590.8 pounds.
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Reeves was joined by fellow Team USA weightlifter and 2021 World Champion Meredith Alwine, who finished 15th at the Cup this year.
Editor’s Note: At the time of this competition, Reeves was 20 years of age. However, due to the International Weightlifting Federation’s (IWF) regulations, she is no longer considered a Junior athlete because she turns 21 this calendar year.
When the snatch portion of the competition had wrapped, 20-year-old Reeves found herself comfortably in the lead by a three-kilogram margin against both Liao Guifang (CHN) and Song Kuk-Hyang (PRK), two of the 71-kilogram Senior world record holders.
Neither Kuk-Hyang nor Guifang could clean & jerk enough weight to surpass Reeves, despite both women attempting 154 kilograms multiple times for the lead. This is the first time in history that an American female weightlifter has beaten both China and North Korea, the world’s two most dominant weightlifting teams, by such a significant margin.
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Despite her rapid rise to prominence within American weightlifting, Reeves’ competitive career within the IWF actually dates back to 2019 with a silver-medal finish at the Youth World Championships that year.
Reeves started competing in Senior-level international weightlifting competitions in 2022, while still a Junior athlete herself. She competed internationally five times in 2023, all at the Senior level, and made it to the podium every time:
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Regardless of how she performed at this event, Reeves had already booked her ticket to Paris as she sat comfortably in second place on the IWF’s qualification ranking leaderboards. She remains in second place but is now considered a viable contender for the Olympic gold medal in the 71s in Paris.
The multi-Junior-world-record-holder is expected to join 2020 Olympian Jourdan Delacruz (49KG) and 2023 World Championships runner-up Mary Theisen-Lappen as the trio of female weightlifters representing the United States on the Olympic stage in Paris this summer.
Featured Image: @atginsta on Instagram
Jake is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a B.S. in Exercise Science. He began his career as a weightlifting coach before transitioning into sports media to pursue his interest in journalism.
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