On Monday night my boss announced he had 18 tickets to weightlifting for that night. When else would I ever see weightlifting? If I go see weightlifting, I might as well see the BEST in the WORLD. I can't pass up a FREE ticket to an Olympic event.

 

I know absolutely NOTHING about weightlifting. So....whoever lifts the most WINS, right? So...there is a weight category and we were watching Men 62KG. And it was the clean-and-jerk event. Another weightlifting event is called snatch. They have great names for these weightlifting events, don't they?

 

So....for clean and jerk....you get the weights up to shoulder height and then thrust it over head. They can split their feet with one leg in front of the other and hold it over above their head for a certain amount of time.

 

We had FANTASTIC seats in the front, on the lifter's right side.

 

The event was very exciting. It was great atmosphere in the gymnasium. It came down to the Chinese guy vs Columbian guy. The fans were into it. There was a very loud Columbian cheering section.

 

The crowd went crazy when Zhang had a successful lift. He dropped the weights to the ground. Then he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around the weights. Actually the Columbian dude was ecstatic to win the silver. It’s great to see athletes excited about winning a silver medal. Actually....the Columbian seemed happier about his silver than Zhang about his gold.

 

For my very first weightlifting event, I had a GREAT time. It was nice to see a not-so mainstream sport that I would not normally have seen. This event would not have been shown on NBC. There wasn't an even an American competing in this event.