Women’s Olympic Weightlifting in the United States: Part One

Olympic weightlifting for men dates to the very first Olympic games in Athens in 1896. The first iteration for women came in 2000 at the Sydney Games. It took until 1987 for the first world weightlifting championship for women versus 1891 for men. Likewise, the first recognizable meets for women only came in the 1970s... Continue Reading →

Guest Post: History of Chinese Weightlifting Part 3: Crash and Recovery through the Cultural Revolution

Today's post comes primarily from the Ma Strength Olympic weightlifting book written by Manuel Buitrago, an expert on Chinese weightlifting techniques. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) and subsequent natural disasters affecting crop harvests, China entered the Great Famine of 1962–63 (Fan & Lu 2012a). Additionally, while the experience with Soviet teams laid... Continue Reading →

Tom Farrey, ‘Tough, Determind: Arlys Kovach Has Come Back From a Shattering Accident to Become One of Top Female Weightlifters in the World,’ LA Times, June 26, 1986.

There was a time when people became strong from shoveling snow, hefting hay bales or wielding pick-axes in the mines, not from Nautilus machines, or steroids. They were cut from the land, products of their environment. They came from hard-working farms and hard-working towns. One of those towns is International Falls, Minn., known to some... Continue Reading →

Drug-taking in Ancient Times

Performance enhancing drugs seem to become more problematic every year. Athletes are getting bigger, stronger and faster. Spectators are getting curious, suspicious and concerned. Performance enhancing drugs have touched nearly every major sport at one level or another. It's a modern problem right? Well not exactly... Research into the Ancient Greek Olympics has uncovered evidence... Continue Reading →

Guest Post: Women’s Sport History

  Historically, people idealized woman’s femininity and frailty, frowning on female participation in sports that threatened to destroy those coveted qualities. However, in spite of that, there were always sporting outlets for women to participate in. Certain sports like tennis, croquet, archery and swimming were available for women ever since the Gilded Age. While today... Continue Reading →

Up ↑