Senior Pan Ams is halfway done and thanks to Travis Cooper’s performance tonight Team USA is finally on the board.

This meet counts as a Continental Qualifier for Rio 2016, but the process is a bit convoluted. Here’s how it works: after each session, countries are awarded points based on how their athlete finished in their division. Here’s the breakdown of points per place:




In a Continental Qualifier, only countries who do not already have spots can earn points. Since Colombia earned 5 spots to Rio through the World Championship Qualifier and since Brazil is given spots for being the host country, neither of them count towards the rankings for these points. What that means is if a Colombian finishes 1st overall followed by a Honduran, the Colombian still wins Gold at Pan Ams, but the Honduran is awarded the 1st place points.

To further complicate things, only the top 6 performances from any country are counted towards the points, so if a country has 8 lifters total only the top 6 will earn points to count towards the final ranking.

At the end of the competition, the top 7 countries are awarded one spot each to the Olympics.

So where do the points stand right now? Here’s the breakdown:




These totals are not final and while the US is ranked very low, we still have five lifters to go: James Tatum (85), Kendrick Farris (94), Donovan Ford (105), Wes Kitts (105), and Caine Wilkes (105).

Farris and Wilkes have a great shot at the top spot on the podium and Tatum, Ford, and Kitts all have competitive entry totals to compete for podium spots.

On top of that, this ranking is a bit skewed because many of the top countries in this ranking have already had four, five, or six lifters compete and only have a one or two more opportunities to score points whereas we have only had one lifter score points and still have plenty of opportunities.