Re:Olympic Weightlifting

[Guest guest]

Eddie,

I don't think you have to go far as to why USA isn't competitive at all with

Weightlifting...there's no money in it, so you never truly have you best

qualified athletes competing in those events.

As it stands, our best athletes are tied up in Football, Basketball, Baseball,

and Hockey on the men's side, and Basketball, Volleyball, Soccer, and Tennis on

the women's side, with Golf quickly making a rise as well. The reason is

because the chances of making money or obtaining a college scholarship in those

sports is a possibility, but last time I checked, you neither can be a

millionaire or really have your entire schooling plus living expenses paid for

as a lifter. Sure we have the OTC, but it's not the same...everyone that I know

that's been there always says that it ends up costing them money to be there.

Even within the strength sports, I'd say that going into Strongman,

Powerlifting, or dare I say Body Building, is at least potentially a more

lucrative choice than going into Weightlifting, so if you have lifters that want

to take it to the next level, it makes way more sense to go in other routes

financially speaking.

The bottom line is that Weightlifting is set up to fail from the start. You

never get the best athletes involved at an early age, and the ones that do or

have an interest in training with weights seem to end up in going into these

other directions whether it Strongman or Powerlifting. What needs to happen is

USAW's approach needs to change drastically. They have zero clue how to

increase awareness and popularity. Part of it is a financial restraint, but

other part is that their plan is flawed. They need to increase awareness at a

much younger age, and they need to expand their coaching much more than just

regionally to have a chance, IMO. They need to infiltrate at the junior high

and high school ages, plus, get much more involved with the collegiate strength

and conditioning coaches who can potentially steer some athletes into that

direction who likely will not be competing at the next level with their current

sport.

I bet it's going to take a good amount of years to see another A group lifter

coming from the USA competing the way things are currently are through USAW.

M.G. Mirra

Moraga, CA