Weightlifter Mattie Rogers Is Back On The Podium After Big Day At World Championships

Mattie Rogers poses at the women's snatch medal ceremony during the 2021 IWF World Championships on Dec. 14, 2021 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Mattie Rogers left her first Olympic Games this past summer in Tokyo with a lot of questions. One of the faces of the U.S. weightlifting team going into the Games, her training had gone well and she was in peak physical shape.
Then her world unraveled.
“I just happened to have the worst panic attack ever, at the wrong time on the biggest stage,” she told TeamUSA.org last month. “I could not get it back together.”
Rogers ended up finishing sixth place. In the months since she’s worked with doctors to understand what happened that day at the Tokyo International Forum. She also traveled to Iceland in September to marry husband Sean McCormick, one year after they had initially planned, and completed a long-awaited training gym at their home in Geneva, Florida.
This week, the 26-year-old was back in familiar territory: on the podium at a major championship.
Rogers lifted a combined 243 kilograms to secure the silver medal in the women’s 76 kg. division Tuesday at the IWF World Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In addition, she earned a second silver medal in the clean and jerk, plus a bronze medal in snatch. Unlike at the Olympic Games, when medals are awarded only for total weight, the world championships also recognize medalists for the individual lifts.
The results further boost the resume of Rogers, who was already the most decorated U.S. woman in the Olympic era of weightlifting, which began in 2000. She now has 10 medals in four appearances at the world championships, and notably those medals have come in three different weight classes.
Cheryl Haworth is second among U.S. women with five world championships medals since 2000. Going back to the first women’s world championships in 1987, Robin Byrd-Goad leads all U.S. women with 20 medals.
Competing this week at Tashkent’s Uzbekistan Sport Complex, Rogers went four for six on her lifts. Her total weight trailed that of South Korea’s Min Ji Lee by 1 kg. Lee also won clean and jerk with a lift of 139 kg. — three ahead of Rogers.
Iana Sotieva of the Russian Weightlifting Federation won snatch (112 kg.), followed by Brazil’s Laura Nascimento Amaro (108 kg.) and Rogers (107 kg.).
The world championships continue through Dec. 17, with 10 athletes representing Team USA in Uzbekistan.