Team USA is ready for the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Junior World Championships in Fiji this weekend. The Junior World Championship holds a high level of importance as a gold-level qualifier for Tokyo 2020. All of the qualifiers ahead of Tokyo 2020 are ranked gold, silver, and bronze by level of importance. For the junior members of Team USA, this event is another opportunity to ramp up his or her ROBI score and to check off another qualifying meet.
Team USA will take on the platform on Saturday, June 2 at the National Gymnasium and you can watch all of the action live on Team USA’s website. The start times for all of the athletes are also provided on the site.
Big Names to Watch
A couple of names to keep an eye out for are USA Weightlifting’s CJ Cummings, Kate Nye, Harrison Maurus. Both athletes have recently had record-setting performances at the Pan American Championships in April.
CJ Cummings
Cummings who competed in the -73kg weight class broke 15 records at the Pan American Championships (3 IWF Junior World Records, 3 Junior Pan American Records, 3 Senior Pan American Records, 3 Junior American Records, 3 Senior American Records, and 3 Gold Medals.) You read that right, he went six-for-six on that day.
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In similar record-setting fashion, Nye, who competed in the -71kg weight class also went six-for-six on the day. Nye was named the 2019 Pan American Champion and brought home three gold medals. She also broke a record in every single lift she performed.) Last month, Nye shared some of her secrets for hitting personal records and said that her next goal would be to hit a new PR on the platform in Fiji.
Nye told BarBend in an interview last month, “I have my eyes on the prize, I want to go to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games,” Nye said proudly. “So now until then, I’m completely focused on that goal. You should expect me to try and do my best and attack some big totals at big international meets, Junior Worlds, Senior Worlds, and all of that.”
Harrison Maurus
Maurus, a recognizable name for Team USA will be competing in the men’s 81kg category this weekend. Maurus will make his third appearance at the Junior World Championships after finishing in sixth place last year and earning a bronze medal in 2017.
Qualification System Details
The Tokyo 2020 qualifying period has been running since November, 2018 and will go through April, 2020. There’s a lot that goes into qualifying, and there have been some major changes since the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, so we’ve gone ahead and broke down the changes made to the qualifying system. The changes that pertain to the qualification periods date back to January 2018 when the IWF announced the new Olympic Qualification System that now requires individual athletes to compete six times during the 18-month qualification period for Tokyo.
Will Nye, Cummings, and the other athletes competing break more records and further their chance of qualifying for Tokyo?
Editor’s Note: BarBend is the Official Media Partner of USA Weightlifting. The two organizations maintain editorial independence unless otherwise specified on partner content.
Feature image from @cj__cummings Instagram page.
