Pan American Senior Championships

Everything You Really Need to Know About Team USA at PanAms

Everything You Really Need to Know About Team USA at PanAms

Our brand new documentary "Do Or Die" takes you inside the world of Weightlifting, and Olympic qualification, like no story has done before. Why was this co

Jul 25, 2016 by Paige Bayer
Everything You Really Need to Know About Team USA at PanAms
Our brand new documentary "Do Or Die" takes you inside the world of Weightlifting, and Olympic qualification, like no story has done before. Why was this competition in Cartagena, Colombia so important for the US? What made the stakes so high?

Rio.

One Olympic spot on the line for a country who currently sits with zero spots takes the importance and the pressure of the competition to a new level.

On the women's side, Jenny Arthur was the first named to the US Olympic Team. She earned her spot based on her performances at 2014 and 2015 Worlds. Morghan King and Sarah Robles also joined her after Olympic Trials in May. The women were set.

On the men's side however, after Worlds, the US men hadn't earned any spots. There are multiple ways a country can earn Olympic spots, however at this point in the game, the last chance they had to send one of their men to Rio was by totaling 7th place or higher at a competition on Colombia's Caribbean Coast. Enter PanAms.

When injury and a bomb-out struck the team early in the competition, the pressure and the stakes of the already intensive competition escalated even higher. There was a chance the United States would not have a single male athlete on the platform in Rio.



Episode 1:


Episode 2: