Back in June, Hillary Tran went a little bit viral. By posting an Instagram Reel — as of Oct. 2024, it’s up to 4.8 million hits — showing some of Team China’s youth athlete development camps in action, Tran pulled the curtain back and revealed the innards of the world’s most prolific, and perhaps secretive,...
Category: Featured
For Some Olympic Athletes, Getting a Medal Through TSA Is the Hardest Part
Ever since she won a medal at the 2020 Olympics, Kate Vibert has been embroiled in a beef with the Transportation Security Administration. “[The medal] almost always gets flagged when I’m going through airport security,” Vibert tells BarBend, chuffed at the chance to vent about it. “It shows up as a large, dark circle on...
The Bulgarian Method Is Madness: A Look at the Hardest Weightlifting Routine Ever Created
In the dusty, beige, and completely silent training hall of the Bulgarian weightlifting federation, Zlatan Vanev approaches a barbell loaded with 210 kilograms, just a bit more than 460 pounds. Over the last 20 minutes, Vanev had tried four separate times to lift it overhead. Howling, Vanev tries again and fails again. He wanders off,...
How an Unexpected Phone Call Could Get 36-Year-Old Weightlifter Caine Wilkes Back to the Olympics
When a tendon snaps off of the bone, it feels more like a dull pop than the crack of a whip. If you’re distracted at that moment, say by the cold kiss of a steel bar slamming into your clavicles, you might not even notice it. At least, that’s how Caine Wilkes describes it. Wilkes...
Here’s Every American Weightlifter Who Has Won an Olympic Medal
If you’ve ever picked up a barbell and hoisted it over your head, dreaming of greatness, you’ve probably fantasized — at least for a moment — about the Olympics. The pinnacle of any weightlifter’s career, Olympic hopefuls from across the globe train to compete in the Games and — even better — to bring home...
5 of the Best Weightlifting Moments in 2022
Weightlifting happens fast. Often, the most significant moments in the sport are measured in milliseconds rather than minutes. That said, a lot goes beyond the competition platform that shapes the sport’s future as well. From bureaucratic reforms to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it (seriously) World Records, 2022 was ablaze with moments in Olympic lifting that shifted the status quo, sharpened...
5 of the Best Weightlifting Athletes in 2022
Sports are only as good as the athletes that play them. With no one on the field, the ball doesn’t move; the same idea holds as true in weightlifting as in any other sport. After all, the barbell can’t lift itself. In a way, weightlifting illuminates the full-time athlete’s determination, grit, and ferocity better, perhaps,...