Morris’ 172 kg C&J put him one kilogram ahead of Malaysia’s Aniq Kasdan and the young American then looked to break his own clean & jerk world record of 176 kg with an attempt at 178 kg that would have earned him a silver medal, but he came just shy of completing the jerk portion. The bronze is Team USA’s 48th Olympic weightlifting medal, and 15th bronze.

Originally listed to open the snatch at 125 kg, Morris ultimately dropped to a more conservative 122 kg to start the competition. Staying at 125 kg would have tied the heaviest opener of his career. After successfully snatching 122 kg, his second attempt of 125 kg was called a no lift due to a press out. Morris remained confident and bumped his third attempt up to 126 kg, just one kilogram shy of the American record that he set at the 2024 IWF World Cup in Phuket. He showed perfect form on this attempt, and sat in fifth after the snatch portion of the competition.

Four out of the 12 lifters were unable to record a successful snatch, leaving just eight competitors in the clean & jerk portion. Morris would have to wait until the rest of the competition attempted at least one clean & jerk before going for the heaviest opener of the session at 168 kg. He made the clean look easy but was unsuccessful on the jerk. On his second attempt (172 kg), he looked to avoid any slippage by rolling the bar forward to the front of the platform before his lift. His feet stayed true and he completed the clean & jerk to tie the Olympic record and move into position for a bronze medal. Trailing the second-place lifter by five kilograms, Morris bumped his third attempt to a potential world record 178 kg. Morris completed the clean but couldn’t finish the jerk.

HAMPTON MORRIS, OLYMPIC BRONZE MEDALIST! 🇺🇸

Hampton is the United States’ first men’s Olympic medalist since 1984! pic.twitter.com/Z8WCO98YW3

One of two juniors in the 61 kg session, Morris is four months older than Kiribati’s Kaimauri Erati. Erati recorded 100/120/220 in his first Olympic Games. Morris set the stage for the remaining four American weightlifters in Paris, with Jourdan Delacruz immediately following in the 49 kg session.

The pressure build up  early on as Trinh van Vinh of Vietnam and John Ceniza of the Philippines, who were both ranked in the top four in the class coming into the Games, failed on all three attempts at the weight they had chosen in the opening snatch.

Olympic weightlifting, simply known to athletes as weightlifting, is not to be confused with weight lifting, the act of lifting weights; or powerlifting, a completely different strength sport. Weightlifters have three attempts to complete each of the two Olympic lifts: the snatch and the clean & jerk. The athlete with the highest combined total wins. Weightlifting was first competed at the 1896 Olympics in Athens, making it one of the oldest sports at the Games, but it didn't become a regular event in the competition until 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium.

Soviet athletes, Europeans and Chinese athletes typically dominate the men's competition. After women were allowed to compete in 2000, Team China often ends on top of the podium.

But the Olympic weightlifting programme has evolved greatly over the years. Since the 1976 Montreal Games, there have been two lifts in the competition: snatch and deadlift. In the snatch, the bar is lifted from the ground to overhead in a single movement. In the lunge, on the other hand, the bar is first raised to the shoulders and then lifted overhead. These extremely demanding exercises require exceptional physical strength and fierce mental determination.

In Paris 2024, each country has been allowed to send three men and three women, one per weight class. Currently, competitors perform both lifts three times and their best result in each lift is combined to determine their total score. The athlete with the highest total score is declared the winner. Men and women compete in five weight categories at Paris 2024.

On Saturday, Spain's David Sánchez López asked the CAS, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, a body that deals with sports-related disputes, to exclude Türkiye from the Games in relation to a case of doping involving three members of its national team. These accusations had e already been proven by the International Weightlifting Federation. In fact, a sanction was issued to these weightlifters on 22 July.

The problem is that the sanction is merely financial, i.e. a fine that does not exclude them from participating in Paris despite the fact that the unsporting practice of doping has been established.

So the Spanish player, 10th in Rio 2016 and Tokio 2020, has lodged an appeal against the Turkish Federation's decision with the ADC, appealing to the IWF's own anti-doping rules and the fact that this was the case during the previous qualifiers. If this petition goes ahead, Sánchez López could participate in the Games.

Türkiye has had a weightlifter provisionally suspended for a doping violation for the third time in three months and has become the fourth nation liable to lose some or all of its quota places for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

These are intense days for CAS, which in fact has a specific office (the so-called Ad Hoc Division) in Paris to resolve, sometimes on the same day, the questions that arise, related to licences, registrations, doping or other rules.