When there’s a gold medal on the line, you take a page out of Nike’s playbook and just do it — exactly what weightlifter Cicely Kyle did at the USA Weightlifting (USAW) National Championships on Friday, Jun. 21, 2024.
Kyle, 40, dislocated her left middle finger during the biggest Olympic weightlifting meet in the States. While balancing a nearly 200-pound barbell on her collarbones, Kyle popped her broken finger back into place, then finished the lift to win the gold medal.
[Fixing my finger] wasn’t a conscious decision. I did what I needed to do to finish the lift.
– Cicely Kyle
“All I was thinking was, ‘I have to stay in this moment,'” Kyle told BarBend in an exclusive interview. We caught up with the weightlifting veteran to find out how she pulled off one of the zaniest stunts ever seen on a lifting platform.
How It Happened
Kyle competes in Olympic lifting — known formally at the Olympic Games as just ‘weightlifting’ — a strength sport consisting of two barbell exercises: the snatch and clean & jerk.
Kyle, who weighs just 99 pounds, went blow-for-blow with other weightlifters to see who could lift the most cumulative weight over three single attempts in each exercise.
The way Kyle tells it, she appeared for the second half of the event to begin her clean & jerk attempts, beginning with 88 kilograms, or 194 pounds — almost twice her own weight. That’s when it happened.
- “As I was standing up [with the barbell], I felt my finger ‘pop,'” Kyle says. “I physically couldn’t close my hand around the bar anymore, so I knew this was my only chance to post a Total [the combined result of her two best lifts and the metric by which weightlifters are ranked in competition].”
Luckily, completing a split jerk, which involves pushing a loaded bar from the neck to arm’s length overhead, depends more on lower-body power than upper-body strength.
“I did what I needed to do to make a Total,” Kyle remarks. “Too much had gone into preparing for this competition.”
The Right Stuff: Kyle is a medal-winning member of Team USA who has competed in international weightlifting events since 2020. But her primary focus is her decade-plus career as a Physician Assistant; she credits her medical expertise for helping her stay cool under pressure.
- “I’ve worked in emergency medicine for 10 years. Dealing with dislocated joints is common, but there’s usually a lot of numbing cream involved,” Kyle jokes.
After stabilizing her barbell overhead and securing a high-enough Total to best the 45-kilogram runner-up by 17 kilograms, Kyle sought medical attention and accepted her gold medal with a big swollen finger — and an even bigger smile.
“My finger was fully cocked to the right. I had no idea how crazy it was until after the competition when I could finally process everything,” Kyle says. She expects to make a full recovery and continue her weightlifting career, no matter “what wheels fall off” along the way.
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Is Weightlifting Dangerous?
Despite its reputation — and the occasional story of fingers bent to 90-degree angles — competitive weightlifting isn’t as dangerous as you might think. After all, it takes tremendous strength, flexibility, and grit to hoist a heavy barbell from the floor to overhead in the blink of an eye.
Stat Sheet: According to studies on injury rates in sports at the recreational, collegiate, and professional levels, weightlifting injuries are far less common than many other sports.
[Related: The Best Weightlifting Belts for Safe Lifting]
- One study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine noted that weightlifting injuries are “similar to other sports requiring strength and power, but lower [than] contact sports.” (1)
- A study from 2007 marked roughly 35 instances of injury in football per 1,000 “athlete exposures,” which are defined as one athlete participating in one practice or competition. (2)
- An earlier study from 1999 recorded weightlifting as having 3.3 injuries per 1,000 hours of exposure. (3)
In 10 years of competing [in weightlifting], I’ve never had an injury in competition.
Cicely Kyle
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References
- Aasa U, Svartholm I, Andersson F, et al. Injuries among weightlifters and powerlifters: a systematic review. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2017;51:211-219.
- Hootman JM, Dick R, Agel J. Epidemiology of collegiate injuries for 15 sports: summary and recommendations for injury prevention initiatives. J Athl Train. 2007 Apr-Jun;42(2):311-9. PMID: 17710181; PMCID: PMC1941297.
- Calhoon G, Fry AC. Injury rates and profiles of elite competitive weightlifters. J Athl Train. 1999 Jul;34(3):232-8. PMID: 16558570; PMCID: PMC1322916.
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: Cicely Kyle / @cicelykyle
