Olympic and world champion Olivia Reeves will miss the World Weightlifting Championships one month from now due a stress fracture on her L5 vertebrae.
“Please, no need to cry much as I have this has been in the works since July,” was posted on Reeves’ social media. “After nationals (in June), I found out I had a bilateral pars defect on my L5. If I continued to lift I risked cracking it all the way through and then it becoming a serious spinal cord injury. It has been since July that I -on the record- attempted to go through a workout.”
Though Reeves can return to training Oct. 12, she will not be able to return to competition in time for the World Championships in China, which run Oct. 27-Nov. 8 and mark the first in a two-year series of qualifying competitions for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
In the first of two periods of Olympic qualifying, lifters’ three best results over six competitions through the 2027 Worlds are counted, so lifters can miss multiple events and still rank highly.
Reeves, a 23-year-old from Chattanooga, Tennessee, posted that she plans to compete in the second Olympic qualifier in Doha in December.
“Overall, I have certainly been better but grateful for the timing and support I’ve had to ensure there will be no reoccuring pain,” her post read. “I can’t even say it’s the worst thing to happen to me this year so I owe myself some compassion. As it turns out I’m not that special and every athlete gets hurt if you do this long enough. I cannot justify this as a failure when my goal has always been to embrace the experience.”
In 2024, Reeves became the first American to win Olympic weightlifting gold in 2000. Later that year, she became the first U.S. lifter to pair Olympic gold with a world title since 1958.
