U.S. female weightlifter Jourdan Delacruz achieved her first medal of the World Weightlifting Championships on Tuesday in the women’s 49kg division, claiming bronze in the competition.
Team U.S.A. made its weightlifting World Championships debut on Tuesday at the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The 49kg A session was highlighted by two bronze medals for Jourdan Delacruz, her first ever at the Worlds and Team USA’s first of the tournament.
The 25-year-old initially faced a crisis in the earlier stages of the competition when she failed to complete her opening lifts in both the snatch and clean and jerk.
Delacruz’s statement regarding her bronze medal
“I wasn’t nervous or anything. I think I was almost overly confident in my openers cause we have just been doing so many reps at those weights that I feel like maybe I just took it for granted.”, Delacruz said.
Delacruz later bounced back as she managed to lift 88 kilograms (194 pounds) in the snatch and 112 kilograms (246 pounds) in the clean and jerk. She was asked in a post-competition interview of what went through her head as she strived to comeback from two missed openers.
“I wasn’t nervous or anything. I think I was almost overly confident in my openers cause we have just been doing so many reps at those weights that I feel like maybe I just took it for granted. But coming back from it, I think like the pressure of us getting closer to the end of these qualification for Paris makes it like, you’re just going to will it in place ‘cause like, no way I’m letting this go.”, Delacruz said.
She achieved a total weight of 200 kg and reached the podium with the record. The first place went to China’s Jiang Huihuan who achieved a world record of 215kg in the 49 kg division and the second place went to the Olympic gold medalist Hou Zhihui who had a total weight of 211 kg.
“I had no idea until I got off and then Spencer said I got a bronze in clean and jerk.” Delacruz told USA Weightlifting in an interview.
Delacruz improved on her 2022 Worlds seventh-place result of 191kg and her Tokyo Games seventh place result where she missed three clean and jerks and recorded a total weight of 108kg.
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