When a tendon snaps off the bone, it feels more like a dull pop than the crack of a whip. If you’re distracted at that moment, say by the cold kiss of a steel bar slamming into your clavicles, you might not even notice it.
At least, that’s how Caine Wilkes describes it. Wilkes bruised or partially tore — imaging wasn’t “super conclusive” — something in his knee during the 2023 Pan American Weightlifting Championships. Pan Ams are usually pretty routine for Wilkes. He had appeared there on behalf of the United States eight different times and won thrice.
An illustrious twenty-year career, tallying 22 international medals for the States, culminated in Wilkes making it to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games when he was 34. He placed ninth in the Men’s +109-kilogram super-heavyweight division, a class helmed by the strongest men ever to live. Wilkes was the second-oldest athlete in the top 10.
I thought my international career was over.
After Tokyo, Wilkes began to convince himself his weightlifting career had shuttered; hit the floor with the same authoritative thud of a five-hundred-and-some-change-pound barbell dropped from eight feet up in a silent stadium.
Almost three years later, Wilkes popped his knee like a Snapple cap while winning another medal at Pan Ams. Back in the mix, Caine Wilkes is headed for the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships and maybe, just maybe, punching his ticket to another Olympic Games.
Readiness
For some athletes, the Olympics are a decidedly one-and-done affair. The way Wilkes originally tells it, he had no more mountains to climb after Tokyo. He sobbed for nearly half an hour after his campaign had closed and his bar hit the floor for the final time there.
Under the tutelage of his father, Chris, Wilkes and his three brothers first picked up the barbell in their pre-teens. Weightlifting is the family business.
His brothers would eventually retire from competitive weightlifting, but Caine kept up with it. In his mid-20s, he had won a few national titles and made his first World team. And then another. And another after that. By his 30th birthday, he was a mainstay on the States’ international roster.
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Now 36, Wilkes planned to quietly settle into the Masters category for athletes 35 years of age and up. Compete “once in a while,” maybe. Then his phone rang.
“They needed me to show my readiness,” Wilkes says. He has a kind, unassuming face and long, bushy black hair. His demeanor is warm and floaty. It’s hardly the image most would conjure for a career strength athlete.
“They” are USA Weightlifting (USAW), the sport’s governing body in the States. A rep had called Wilkes at the tail end of February 2023 and asked if he could fill in at Pan Ams after one of their promising up-and-comers had been plucked from the team.
“I thought my international career was over [after Tokyo]. So when USAW called me and said they needed an alternate, I jumped at the chance,” Wilkes says. Pan Ams was a lifeline, a chance to get back in the saddle. After 20-plus years battling the barbell, Wilkes considered it a lucky break.
The sport of weightlifting cares little for, and in some ways punishes, longevity. A report from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research details that the average age of Olympic medalists is trending upwards. But that finding doesn’t hold up across every sport.
Events “relying on speed and flexibility” — qualities needed in abundance to succeed in weightlifting — are dominated by younger competitors. At the Tokyo Games, the three athletes who stood upon the men’s super-heavyweight weightlifting podium were 25 years old on average.
He’s so steady in high-pressure situations. To me, he’s one of the most consistent lifters in the world.
Readiness tests are standard for American weightlifters awaiting international team selection. Before Wilkes could lace up his lifting shoes and begin preparing for his return to the international circuit, he needed to demonstrate, on video, that he still had the strength to contend for the podium.
“[USAW] called on a Thursday, which was supposed to be a rest day,” Wilkes continued, chuckling a bit. Fortunately, he had already begun getting back into the swing of things after months of downtime. “I basically ran to the gym. I snatched 160 kilograms and clean & jerked 190, which was close enough to the qualifying Total,” he says.
Weightlifters compete in two floor-to-overhead lifting disciplines. Athletes have three chances each in the snatch and the clean & jerk to lift the heaviest weight possible. Their best results are combined to create a Total, determining their ultimate ranking.
The Pan American Championships were held in Bariloche, Argentina, beginning on March 25. After the green light from USAW, Wilkes had about a month to prepare, far from the vigorous three-to-four-month “peaking cycle” weightlifters typically commit to.
On average, Wilkes thinks he’s been more healthy than injured throughout his career: “I try not to force things too much…I didn’t want to be achy or broken when I got to Pan Ams,” he says, trailing off. His expression contorts a little. He pivots.
“I remember at Worlds in 2015, I threw my back out three days before I had to compete. That didn’t feel too good. But [the U.S.] was down on points that year, so I couldn’t pull out. I try to be smart about my training, but sometimes being smart isn’t an option.”
Knowing himself after so many years in the sport, Wilkes put smart training on the table ahead of Pan Ams. He focused on quality instead of quantity during his workouts, hitting the gym only four times a week. Weightlifters commonly train five, six, or seven times weekly as they peak for a competition — Wilkes’ gambit would pay off.
Argentina
Weightlifting events are held all year long, both domestically and abroad. Athletes like Wilkes defer to both their personal coaches and the USAW staff to strategize on their behalf and decide which battles are worth fighting.
Sometimes a weightlifter will compete internationally to help them qualify for a more prominent competition. Sometimes they’ll lift because their governing federation asks them to. Sometimes both.
“I talked with Mike a lot in Bariloche about going to Paris [for the 2024 Olympics]. He told me to hit my opening attempts and have fun and not to worry so much about the details [of qualification],” Wilkes says. He remarks that USAW’s faith in his capabilities buoyed his spirits.
Mike Gattone is USAW’s Senior Director of Sports Performance. He’s part of the administrative team that shepherds American athletes during competitions outside of the U.S. and has been a personal friend to Wilkes since 2007. Gattone is beloved by American weightlifters for his caring, athlete-first attitude and no-nonsense disposition.
“Caine is a proven veteran,“ Gattone says. “As a competitor, he’s steady and reliable. And that’s how we measure things. There’s no subjectivity in team selection. Every athlete, including Caine, makes the team if they clear the eligibility criteria.”
Steadiness and reliability are bullseyes. Wilkes has podiumed at seven of the eight Pan American games he’s competed in since 2014. At the 2023 Pan Ams, Wilkes won a bronze snatch medal, gold in the clean & jerk, and silver in the Total. His 22 cumulative international medals have all come from Pan Ams. His most recent podium finish also earned a seat on the World Championships team, a precursor to Games qualification.
The USAW staff generally want to keep things airy for their athletes. Wilkes says that his best performances on the international stage came when he could forget about the circumstances and focus on the barbell that lay before him.
Wilkes fell short of gold in the Total in Argentina by a single kilogram. He lost to 26-year-old Alejandro Medina, another Team USA member and a newcomer with a lot of promise.
The United States won’t send an athlete with almost no international pedigree to compete at the Olympics if they can help it. Wilkes put himself back in the conversation in Argentina. But his success — injured-ish knee aside — hardly guarantees a clear line of sight to the Games. There’s a lot of brush to clear along the way.
Weightlifting’s Uncertain Future
Corruption, bribery, fraud, and a host of other indictments have muddied weightlifting’s international reputation. After finally exorcising the chief agent behind its bureaucratic difficulties, former president Tamas Ajan, in 2020, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) has staked its future on a robust rehabilitation campaign.
Athlete-driven initiatives, including more women in its congress, and plenty of verbal commitments from newly-elected IWF president Mohammed Jalood are among the steps taken to suture the wounds.
Jalood’s IWF has had mixed results so far. The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo was the “cleanest” weightlifting event in the sport’s modern history. “Zero” athletes who performed in Tokyo have been caught using performance-enhancing drugs there, Jalood told Reuters in March:
“The [pro-doping] culture of many countries has changed…If we follow all the recommendations from the IOC, then [their] evaluation, believe me, will be very good for us.”
But as of a year before Paris ‘24, the sport isn’t slated for the ‘28 Games in Los Angeles — a situation the IWF hopes will change after it submitted a report to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in March. The report outlined the actions the IWF has taken since it was initially placed on provisional suspension in December 2021. The IOC hasn’t made a final decision yet.
Weightlifting’s qualification procedure for the Olympics also changed after 2020. Previously, Olympic hopefuls needed to navigate a labyrinth of frequent competition appearances and weighted performance metrics, to the frustration of the athletes and their host countries.
For Paris, things are simpler: If you want to be eligible for the Olympics, you must attend a handful of specific international events and be among the 10 strongest people in the world in your weight class.
Wilkes felt the Tokyo system played to his strengths despite its complications: “It rewarded consistency,” he says. “I was regularly Totaling around 400 [kilograms] leading up to the Games, so I made the team. But with Paris, it’s easier for the younger athletes. If you happen to have a fantastic day and get into the top 10, you’re in there. I think I’d need to Total 420 or so.”
Wilkes isn’t there yet. His international best is 405 kilos, and that was over three years ago. But there are loose seams, technicalities within the qualification procedure enable athletes from underrepresented regions to make it to the Games even if they fall outside the 10th position worldwide. North America is underrepresented in men’s super-heavyweight weightlifting.
The Last First Chance
As the window narrows before the Olympic torch is lit, Wilkes and the rest of Team USA turn their gaze toward the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships (WWC). The Olympic Games may be the sport’s peak, but the WWC is the climb.
“It’s just different at Worlds. It’s more competitive,” Wilkes says. He mentions that there aren’t as many hoops to jump through to qualify for the WWC, so the competition runs much deeper. “There are so many more athletes. There was some good camaraderie when I was at the Olympics. It was a competition, but also a celebration. You don’t find that at the World Championships.”
What you do find at the World Championships, though, are walls. Certain classes, including and especially Wilkes’ +109-kilogram division, have long had their podiums cordoned off by a handful of ultra-high-performers.
For nearly a decade, Georgian super-heavyweight Lasha Talakhadze has presided over the +109s. Talakhadze, a two-time Olympic Champion and six-time World Champion, is a leviathan. He has snatched and clean & jerked more than any human being in history and is undefeated internationally since 2012.
When they last competed together in 2019, Talakhadze won with a 484-kilogram Total. Wilkes hit 403. To close that gap would be unheard of in the history of the sport. But Wilkes doesn’t have to win Worlds to make it to the Olympics, nor must he beat the other athletes between him and Talakhadze’s podium.
The 2023 WWC runs from September 4th to the 17th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and is the first mandatory competition for Games qualification. If Wilkes has a good day on the platform and puts up a Total that rivals his best work, he’ll make a strong argument for himself ahead of Paris. Momentum is everything.
It’s just different at Worlds. There’s so much more competition.
Riyadh will be Wilkes’ sixth World Championships in the last decade. His experience on weightlifting’s biggest stages, despite never making it to the World podium, is an advantage. His presence on Team USA also comforts his fellow athletes — many of whom have racked up more prestigious accolades in less time.
“Team USA is pretty fresh for this quad, and Caine has become such a good leader for the rest of the team,” says 71-kilogram weightlifter Meredith Alwine, who won the 2021 WWC when she was 23 years old. “He’s so steady in high-pressure situations. To me, he’s one of the most consistent lifters in the world.”
There are no medals for consistency in weightlifting. In Riyadh, Wilkes is ranked 31st by entry Total. He’s the third-oldest man in his class. The knee he injured in Argentina still pains him here and there.
And the Paris qualification system, in stark contrast to Games prior, rewards viciousness on the platform rather than tenure. But if Wilkes can put together a good performance in Riyadh and outpace some of the other Central and North American superheavies, he might squeak into Paris.
Anything Else Is Icing
Weightlifters deify the Olympic Games. The sport is defined by its residence there; it’s colloquially known as Olympic lifting to most and stands distinct from other strength-based athletics like powerlifting or CrossFit that aren’t contested under the rings.
Some athletes are certain that Paris will be weightlifting’s swan song. Decades of governmental chaos and constantly changing rulesets have confounded a sport whose charm is upheld by its simplicity: When you’re on the platform, you can either lift the weight, or you can’t.
Caine Wilkes doesn’t worry too much about all the other stuff. He isn’t concerned with stepping out under the lights in Paris to right a wrong from Tokyo, to earn a medal he feels he was denied, or to tack another thing onto his resume. The only real obligation Wilkes feels is toward himself, and what he can muster his body to do after a lifelong pursuit of strength.
“No matter how I slice it, I’m coming to the end of my career. I think next year will be my twenty-fifth year [of weightlifting]. There’s a very good chance that, regardless of what I think of myself, I may not improve anymore,” Wilkes says. “And I think I’m okay with that.” He smiles. Hints of melancholy sprout along his cheeks.
“Growing up, my dad…” — Wilkes has been coached by his father for his entire career — “…before my first lift at a competition, he would always tell me to just have fun. Anything else is icing on the cake.”
Editor’s Note: BarBend is the Official Media Partner of USA Weightlifting. The two organizations maintain editorial independence unless otherwise noted on specific content projects.
Featured Image: William Johnson / @barbellstories
