When Harrison Maurus won his 77kg weight class at the 2017 Youth World Championships in Bangkok, he set a youth world record in the clean & jerk (192kg) and the total (332kg), but not the snatch. The youth world snatch record currently sits at 160 kilograms (352.7 pounds) and was set by Colombia’s Yeison Lopez at last year’s Youth World Championships in Penang, Malaysia.
But while he’s known for his tremendous clean & jerk, Harrison Maurus has clearly been working hard on improving his snatch. He lifted 140kg in Bangkok — take a look at his latest PR, a snatch of 150 kilograms (330.7 pounds) made twice.
He posted this with a caption that just read,
Snatch 150×2 PR, Squat 250×3 PR. It’s a PR kind of day!!!
We’ve been following the 17-year-old athlete’s progress with enthusiasm and the speed with which he’s increased his strength is remarkable. In July, he made a 142kg snatch at the Pan American Weightlifting Championships and in September he hit a new PR of 150kg (330.7lb).
Less than one month later, he pulled off another PR of 155kg. Even for a 17-year-old, that’s a big increase in such a short timeframe.
Over on Reddit, Maurus’ coach Kevin Simons — who is usually pretty active on r/weightlifting’s Harrison Maurus posts — wrote that the young athlete will hit a PR of 160kg on Friday, subject to the approval of Pyrros Dimas and USA Weightlifting’s Assistant Technical Director Mike Gattone. A 160kg snatch, of course, would be equal to Yeison Lopez’s current youth world record.
Simons added,
He has hit 150 or higher 5 times since he first did it 6 weeks ago and has missed less than 3 lifts in the last 8 weeks. He also doubled 135, 141, and 146 before this weighing in at 78.4 this morning.
Back in September, he said he was expecting a 154kg snatch at this year’s World Weightlifting Championships in November. It sounds like, once again, Maurus may exceed expectations.
Featured image via @harrison_maurus on Instagram.
