Women's weightlifting at the Paris Olympics
Hi friends,
Have you been watching the Olympics? I've been watching a lot. My household got a month's subscription to a streaming service just so we could watch all the sports, not just the American highlights. OK, not all all the sports, but a lot of them including some sports that don't get much airtime, like my favorite, women's weightlifting.
Spoiler warning: This post has spoilers for the women's weightlifting 49kg weight class at the 2024 summer Olympics.
I love women's weightlifting at the Olympics. In a few seconds of incredible intensity, a human being does something that might be impossible. Because she's pushing the limits of what she can do, the athlete herself often doesn't know if it'll happen and I get to participate in that vicarious thrill of one person's struggle against the iron weight, against her own physical and psychological limits. When they succeed it's glorious. When they fail, and there are so many ways to fail, it's fascinating to see how they handle it, how they handle safely bailing out, or dropping the weight, or accepting the red light from the judges. How they hold it together, or don't.
Thanks for reading and see you on the internet!
AK