Currently, USA Weightlifting is in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic competing at the 2018 Senior Pan American Weightlifting Championships.
The competition kicked off May 12th and runs through May 18th, so if you haven’t checked out the live stream, then there’s still time to do so. Today, 63kg Mattie Sasser will be taking the platform at 3:30 PM EST, and 69kg Mattie Rogers at 6:00 PM EST. If you’d like to tune in, then check out this link.
Yesterday proved to be a strong day for USA Weightlifting’s team.
CJ Cummings ended up having a stellar performance and went 6/6 winning three medals and setting two American senior records. His snatch attempts started with 137kg, then Cummings progressed to 141kg for his second.
On his third attempt, Cummings called for 144kg, which would be a new Senior American Snatch record and edge out his previous 143kg set at the 2018 Arnold Classic. This 144kg snatch also earned Cummings a silver medal in the snatch.
In his last few competitions, Cummings has been adjusting to squat jerking instead of split and had yet to put up a 3/3 performance doing so. Yesterday, he silenced the criticisms that came along with the strategic switch and smoked all of his clean & jerk attempts.
Cummings opened with 170kg, hit 175kg for his second, and finished with 180kg. His third 180kg attempt earned him gold for the clean & jerk and gave him a total of 324kg. The 324kg total earned Cummings another silver medal and topped his previous senior American record by 2kg.
In addition to Cummings’ strong performance, earlier in the day 53kg Caitlin Hogan defended her silver medal in the snatch. She completed the 58kg snatch below to walk away with a silver and another medal for USA.
Last year, USA Weightlifting walked away with 24 medals, and eight of these included gold. With this strong start, could we be seeing USA take home more medals than in 2017?
Feature image from @usa_weightlifting Instagram page.
