Weightlifting
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As a sport, weightlifting's origins can be traced back to ancient Greek and Egyptian societies where stones and bags filled with sand were used to display strength. Surprisingly, while the top
ancient Greek weightlifters were held in high esteem and evidence exists that weightlifting competitions occurred, the sport was not included in the
ancient Olympic games.
The first world weightlifting competition was held in London in 1891 and won by
Edward Lawrence Levy.
Five years later the modern Olympics began and weightlifting was included on
the as one of nine events on the program. The original Olympic weightlifting
competition was based on 2 lifts, the one-handed dumbbell lift and the
two-handed barbell lift. Weightlifting was dropped from the Olympics in
1900, returned in 1904 and 1906 and then was dropped again. In 1920 it
reappeared and has been included in every Olympics since. 1920 also marked
the first time the competitors were divided into weight classes. Women got a
late start in competitive weightlifting with their first world championship
held in 1987. Women's weightlifting was added to the Olympics beginning in
2000.
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 After the 1920 Olympics, the Olympic committee told the IWF to settle on exactly which lifts would be used in competition. To that point, there had been many lifts used and a failure to agree on which ones best represented the sport.
The 1928 Olympics are considered the year that present day weightlifting was born as three lifts became the standard by which competitions were judged: the clean and jerk, snatch,
and press. In 1973, the press was dropped due to the difficulty of
judging a qualifying lift.
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Formed
in 1905, the 