Whether you’re a fan of weightlifting (the sport), or you just like lifting weights (the hobby), you’ve probably seen Italian weightlifters on your Explore feed once or twice.
Over the past few years, Team Italy’s strongest men and women have captured the hearts and minds of millions online. But at the 2024 Olympics, Europe’s most popular weightlifting roster dropped the ball — or, rather, the bar — and hard.
Three Italian weightlifters competed at the Olympics in Paris this summer.
- Antonino Pizzolato came away with a controversial bronze medal.
- Lucrezia Magistris finished 11th out of 12 in her class.
- Sergio Massidda, a podium candidate, bombed out and didn’t finish.
Meanwhile, two of their biggest thumb-stoppers on social media failed to even qualify. Team Italy’s fame and legions of followers didn’t materialize into success on the weightlifting stage, which begs the question: What the hell happened?
Italian Weightlifters, Explained
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Italian weightlifters won more medals than any other European team. Their success in an Olympic event largely dominated by Asian countries, plus a few of their rising stars catching the current on social media, put Team Italy toward the forefront of weightlifting dialogue.
Italy’s weightlifters live up to their country’s reputation — they’re fierce, open-hearted competitors who are not afraid to make their emotions plain on the competition stage, win or lose. By contrast, weightlifters from other countries where the sport thrives, such as China, are often more restrained.
After Tokyo, Team Italy came out swinging when their 81-kilogram bronze medalist Pizzolato set the inaugural clean & jerk world record in the heavier 89-kilogram category at the 2022 European Championships. Pizzolato would be the only Italian weightlifter from Tokyo to make it to Paris.
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Of the other Tokyo veterans, only Zanni made a real run at Paris. The 26-year-old ranked 12th at the end of the qualification period.
The bulk of Team Italy’s social media fame is scaffolded by “the Giulias”. Giulia Imperio (49KG) has nearly 800,000 followers on Instagram and is the ‘22 European Champion. Giulia Miserendino (71KG) has a little over 250,000 and is the 2021 Junior World Championships runner-up.
- Double-bronzer Pizzolato is Team Italy’s most successful men’s weightlifter of the past five years. “Nino” has a following of 110,000 on the ‘Gram, the primary hub for weightlifting content on social media.
Despite their popularity, neither Imperio nor Miserendino made the cut for Paris. The former failed to keep pace with the other lightweight women in her class; the latter was injured trying. The three Italian weightlifters who appeared on stage in the South Paris Arena struggled in a similar fashion.
Italian Weightlifters at the 2024 Olympics
None of the three Italian weightlifters who lifted in Paris — 61KG Massidda, 59KG Magistris, and 89KG medalist Pizzolato — successfully lifted even half of all their competition attempts. Magistris and Pizzolato were successful 33% of the time. Massidda? An extremely uncharacteristic 0%.
How many lifts you “make” or “miss” doesn’t necessarily matter, but a “6-for-6” performance generally indicates technical mastery, on-stage confidence, and smart coaching choices.
Sergio Massidda (61KG)
“Of all the Italians, Massidda is the one I’d put money on for a medal,” said Weightlifting House commentators Seb Ostrowicz and Max Aita in a Jun. 21 predictions podcast. BarBend had predicted Massidda to win silver before the Games.
Heading into the first weightlifting event of the 2024 Olympics, the youngest Italian weightlifter in Paris ranked third behind Team USA’s Hampton Morris and gold-medal favorite Li Fabin of China.
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Massidda, regarded as having some of the smoothest technique in his category, had performed well in recent competitions prior:
- 2024 IWF World Cup (67KG): 317KG, 66% successful attempts
- 2024 European Championships (67KG): 303KG, 50% successful attempts
- 2023 World Championships (61KG): 302KG, 66% successful attempts
But Massidda missed all three of his snatches at 132, 134, and 134 kilograms at the Olympics. Across his 22 international appearances since 2017, he’d never bombed out — a happy anomaly for Italian weightlifters.
- In fairness, Massidda wasn’t the only one to fumble the bag. Five of the dozen 61KG competitors did not post Totals on Aug. 7.
Lucrezia Magistris (59KG)
For better or worse, Magistris didn’t perform unexpectedly in Paris. The 25-year-old had only made it into the top 20 at her last few World Championships once. While trying to qualify for Paris, Magistris succeeded at a meager 21.4% of her 42 competition attempts across seven events.
Initially, Magistris wasn’t in the 59KG weightlifting top 10 and thus didn’t have a Paris ticket. Stronger athletes from other countries would opt out of the category and allowed Magistris to squeeze into the final slot with her 217-kilogram Total.
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Magistris entered the 2024 Olympics at the tail end of the pack and finished there as well. She made her second snatch (96 kilograms) and her final clean & jerk (112) only, and Totaled 208; 22 kilograms away from the bronze medalist.
Antonino Pizzolato (89KG)
Pizzolato’s bronze medal in Tokyo was a big deal. Prior to 2021, Italy hadn’t won a medal in weightlifting since 1984 (though they have a couple golds in the interim from the Youth Olympics). Helping to end that drought and then snagging a Senior world record was a good omen per gli Italiani.
Pizzolato planted Italy’s flag in the newly-announced-for-Paris 89KG division with a career-best Total of 392 at the 2022 European Championships. However, while attempting to qualify for the 2024 Olympics Pizzolato could not seem to break past 380:
- 2023 IWF Grand Prix II (Dec. ‘23): 380
- 2024 European Championships (Feb. ‘24): 380
- 2024 IWF World Cup (Apr. ‘24): 380
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Pizzolato even hit the exact same weights, 170 kilograms in the snatch and 210 in the clean & jerk, thrice in a row at these events before qualification for Paris ended.
- Nino displayed a flash of brilliance at ‘24 Europeans in February when he cleaned 222 kilograms in a desperate bid to outdo longtime rival (and 2024 Olympic Champion) Karlos Nasar of Bulgaria in front of Nasar’s home crowd in Sofia.
In Paris, Pizzolato fared slightly better, Totaling 384 and scraping bronze despite making only two of six attempts; his second snatch (172) and final clean & jerk (212). Pizzolato collapsed on stage after receiving the “down” signal on his final try, seemingly distraught at the prospect of having bombed out on the Olympic stage.
Controversy bubbled in the South Paris Arena when the competition jury decided to grant Pizzolato his final clean & jerk after it was initially declared invalid by the judges. He had failed to keep his arms straight and rigid with the bar held over his head, which constitutes a “no-lift” at weightlifting meets.
- Moldovan athlete Marin Robu was bumped to 4th as a result of this call. Afterward, Robu took to social media to repeatedly call for “justice” to be done.
Going for Broke
You can’t look at all the red on Team Italy’s scoreboard in a vacuum. It’s a consequence of two years of going for broke at weightlifting meets.
The qualification procedure for Paris hopefuls was brutally straightforward. The TL;DR is, to make it into one of Paris’ five Men’s or Women’s weightlifting events, you had to be among the top 10 strongest people in those categories by the end of April 2024.
Many countries based their strategy around gaming this simplistic qualification system — none more pointedly than Italy.
- “The Italians open too heavy,” said House founder Ostrowicz in Jan. 2023. “They load what they need to break into the top 10, try to lift those numbers, rinse, and repeat.”
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[Opinion: Why Weightlifting Sucks to Watch in 2024]
Ostrowicz is on the money. At the 2024 European Championships, Magistris declared a 225-kilogram preliminary entry Total. Her best Total ever, from Europeans ‘24, is 217. The Italian weightlifters’ all-or-nothing approach contributed to a heartbreaking finish for 49-kilogram Imperio and for 71-kilogram Miserendino, an injury.
Imperio fought hard for a 49-kilogram slot in Paris, but the 22-year-old reached further than her grasp. She bombed out at the last two qualifying events.
- In February, at Europeans, she failed thrice trying to snatch 83 kilograms — a weight she had matched or exceeded five times in the past.
- In April during the World Cup, she bombed clean & jerks at 104, three kilograms heavier than she’d ever done.
Miserendino had fared comparably in the 71s. Early in the qualification cycle, she showed some light with a top-10 finish at Worlds ‘22, including an impressive 110-kilogram snatch.
- Miserendino couldn’t match the pace of the other 71-kilo women. At the last-chance qualifier, she withdrew after injuring her hip on her second snatch attempt.
Italian weightlifters as a collective were successful 22% of the time on stage at the 2024 Olympics. Their bold but unrefined strategy to the Paris qualification system culminated in a pile of missed lifts and one medal with an asterisk attached.
No one besides the athletes themselves and their coaches really know what went on for Team Italy in Paris. If weightlifting success was based solely on social media engagement, Italian weightlifters would run the board at every event they attended.
Between competitions, Team Italy’s weightlifting operation is anything but haphazard. Italian weightlifters have access to technologies ranging from red light therapy to on-staff massage therapists and rely heavily on technical analysis and replays in training.
During an interview published on Aug. 8, head coach Sebastiano Corbu remarked on the system he had developed for Team Italy: “We did our best to prepare [for the Olympics],” Corbu said. “We prefer a small number of athletes that can guarantee a result.”
No system is perfect.
More Weightlifting From the 2024 Olympics
- Is Mihaela Cambei Weightlifting’s Next Superstar?
- Lasha Talakhadze Speaks on Retirement After Winning Third Olympic Gold
- Solfrid Koanda Went From Electrician to Olympic Champion in 3 Years
Featured Image: @yks.media / Instagram
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