Olivia Reeves

Olivia Lynn Reeves, born on April 19th, 2003, is an American weightlifter who has made a significant mark in the sport despite being very young. She won the bronze medal in the women’s 71 kg event at the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and won gold in the women’s 81 kg event at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile. She’s known for her impressive lifts and record-setting performances in various international competitions. 

She got into weightlifting through functional fitness at her mother’s gym in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and then shifted her focus completely to weightlifting in 2015. Reeves’ career took off at the 2021 Junior World Weightlifting Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She received a gold medal in the women’s 71 kg event and continued her winning streak by taking first place in the women’s 71 kg category at the 2021 Junior Pan American Games in Colombia. That same year, she also got a silver medal in the snatch at the World Weightlifting Championships in Tashkent. In 2022, Reeves got a bronze medal in the women’s 71 kg clean and jerk at the World Weightlifting Championships in Colombia. 

In 2023, she earned a bronze medal at the Pan American Weightlifting Championships in Argentina, where she also took bronze in the snatch and gold in the clean and jerk. She then went on to win a bronze medal at the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships in Riyadh in the women’s 71 kg event, setting the new junior world record in the clean and jerk and total. Later that year, she got a gold medal at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, in the women’s 76 kg category. She set new junior Americas records in the snatch (114 kg), clean and jerk (144 kg), and total (258 kg). 

Reeves’ success continued in 2024 when she won a gold medal in the snatch (118 kg), clean and jerk (150 kg), and total (268 kg) in the women’s 71 kg event at the IWF World Cup in Paris. This victory was a big deal because it made her the first lifter from the U.S. to achieve this feat. 

Unlike many lifters, she trained without a lifting belt until she needed it for lifts over 140 kg. Currently, she’s a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and she’s majoring in exercise science. Obviously, she does very well at balancing her academic pursuits with a rigorous training schedule.