Weightlifting

[Competition venue: Tokyo International Forum]

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  Overview
  Platform: 4m x 4m x 10 cm height

  Weightlifters compete in two types of events, the snatch and the clean and jerk, with three attempts at each. The points from the best snatch and the best clean and jerk for each lifter are added together to determine the final results.
  The lift is successful when a lifter brings the barbell above his/her head, and two referees out of three give signals with white lights.

  Key Points

  Separated by gender and weight categories, weightlifting is a reasonably fair competition in which body size does not matter.
  An athlete's success largely depends on his/her power, but it also requires the fundamental elements of all sports, including technique, speed, timing, balance and flexibility.
  Competitors exert all their power and technique at the very moment they lift the barbell. The tense atmosphere of the moment and the great joy of success shared with the athletes are the most appealing aspects of this sport.

  History

  The origin of weightlifting dates back to ancient Greece, where people would lift stones to demonstrate their strength and power. It provided ancient people with a way to choose the leader of their tribe or group. Later, barbells, consisting of a bar with disc-shaped weights, came into use instead of stones, and weightlifting became a competitive sport.
  Although men's weightlifting was included in the Olympic programme at the Athens 1896 Olympics, the sport has occasionally been excluded from the programme. The sport at that time was considered a gymnastics event, and there were no weight classes. It was at the Antwerp 1920 Games that weightlifting became a single sport with classifications.
  At the 2000 Games in Sydney, women's events were also included in the official Games programme, and the names of the classes were changed from "Heavyweight," "Middleweight," etc. to "105 kg," "77 kg," etc.

  Detail

  	Men	Women
  Event	61Kg 67Kg 73Kg 81Kg 96Kg 109Kg + 109kg	49Kg 55Kg 59Kg 64Kg 76Kg 87Kg + 87kg

（Updated on April 10, 2019）