Weightlifting at the 2024 Summer Olympics

The Paris Expo Porte de Versailles exhibition and conference centre hosted the weightlifting events at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The number of individual events contested in Paris had dropped from the 14 that took place at the 2020 Tokyo Games down to 10, five for each gender. This also resulted in a drop of the number of athletes competing, with 122 weightlifters taking part, down from the 194 that competed at the Tokyo Games. For the first time in weightlifting at the Olympics, the gender split was equal, with 61 men and 61 women competing, representing 59 NOCs between them.

China once again dominated the medal table, with five of their six weightlifters winning gold. Bulgaria, the United States, Georgia, Indonesia, and Norway all won one gold each, with Bulgaria and the USA also each wining a bronze. Bahrain won its first Olympic weightlifting medal, with Gor Minasyan winning bronze in the men’s super-heavyweight class (+102 kg).

Twenty-one weightlifting medalists from Tokyo returned to Paris, of whom ten won a medal again. In the male categories, Lasha Talakhadze (GEO) won his third successive Olympic gold, and Li Fabin (CHN) won his second successive gold. The Chinese pair of Hou Zhihui and Li Wenwen also won their second consecutive gold medals in their respective women’s categories. Solfrid Koanda became the first woman for Norway to win a medal of any color at the Olympics when she won gold in the heavyweight class (up to 81 kg). It was only Norway’s second-ever medal in weightlifting at the Olympics, after Leif Jensen won gold in the light-heavyweight class (up to 82.5 kg) at the 1972 München Games. Rizki Juniansyah won gold in the men’s middleweight (up to 73 kg), becoming the first athlete to win a weightlifting gold for Indonesia at the Olympics.

Karlos Nasar of Bulgaria set a world record in the light-heavyweight (up to 89 kg) when he lifted 404 kg. Indonesian lifter Rizki Juniansyah set an Olympic record in the middleweight (up to 73 kg) when he lifted 199 kg. In the women’s events, two Olympic records were set during the Games. Luo Shifang of China lifted 241 kg in the lightweight (up to 59 kg), and Solfrid Koanda of Norway lifted 275 kg in the heavyweight (up to 81 kg).