Mark Wiedmer
The large white banner hanging above an unmarked brown-tinted glass door in a small office park off Bonny Oaks Drive is going to need an update this week. As of Saturday afternoon, it displayed the five Olympic rings, the words “Team USA/2024 Olympics/Paris, France,” and, in much larger, 18-inch high, blue capital letters - OLIVIA REEVES.
What’s missing, of course, are the three words that will now forever more be seen in front of Reeves’ name with every written mention of her: Gold…Medal…Winner.
Within the boundaries of Chattanooga it was the story to end all stories Friday.
Reeves, a sociology major at UT-Chattanooga and a 2021 Notre Dame High School graduate, won the gold medal in the 71 kg weightlifting division, which was also the first gold medal won by an American in weightlifting, men or women, in 24 years. She also set an Olympic record.
Said Reeves to the Associated Press after unleashing tears of joy on the medals stand, “I tried to treat it like any other competition, but it didn’t work. This is the Olympics. Feeling the weight of this competition is different than the others. I kind of knew there were going to be tears, good or bad.”
There’s a good chance Reeves is the first-ever individual gold medalist from the Scenic City. Former Brainerd High and Louisiana Tech alum Venus Lacy won a team gold in women’s basketball at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. Former Baylor School and University of Florida swimmer Geoff Gaberino won a relay gold at the LA Games in 1984. McCallie and University of Michigan long-distance swimmer Sean Ryan, a Chattanooga native, failed to medal at the 2016 Summer Games.
But individual gold? And a record-setting performance in a sport the USA hadn’t won gold in since 2000? Where’s the parade? When will city and county government order signs as you drive into our city from the north, south, east and west that proclaim: “Proud Home of 2024 Olympic Gold-Medal Weightlifter Olivia Reeves”?
I first met Reeves in the spring of 2021 after receiving an email about her while working at another news organization in town. She had just won a world weightlifting championship in Uzbekistan and the email said she had a good chance to reach the Paris Olympics in 2024.
A meeting was set up with her coach, Steve Fauer, whose gym, Tennessee Speed and Strength, stands behind that blank, brown-tinted glass door in the tiny office park off Bonny Oaks Drive.
Almost immediately, Reeves came across as a charming and funny teenager, but more than that, she seemed well-grounded, focused and determined to reach the Paris Olympics.
Asked if that was her dream, she quickly replied that June Saturday morning, “That’s the goal.”
And how badly did she wish to reach the goal? “Pretty badly,” she said.
But how does a teenager in Chattanooga focus on weightlifting? How does she embrace it to the point of Olympic gold when all around her are similar teens addicted to their iPhones, Tik Tok, nights out with friends hanging out at Cookout, the movies or the mall?
How does a college kid majoring in sociology make it to the grandest stage in all of sports to have a gold medal hung around her neck?
For Reeves, it started a little less than 12 years ago when her parents, Amber and Jason, ran a CrossFit gym in North Georgia. Olivia didn’t like much of the training, but she fell hard for the weights.
“I wanted to be good at a sport that I like and enjoy,” she said three years ago. “I like weightlifting.”
But liking something enough to win an Olympic gold medal is a different animal altogether.
“I’ve trained other weightlifters, males, to reach a world championship,” said Fauer in 2021. “When you work with an athlete every day, you don’t always realize how good they are. But with Olivia, the first time she won the nationals, I started thinking we could have something special here.”
All those national and world championships have previously gone into a size 9 shoebox Reeves keeps beneath her bed. She applies sticky notes to the top of the box to remind her where each one came from. It’s doubtful she’ll need a note to remind her of Paris, but she might want to get a safe instead of a shoebox to protect it.
You read about these Olympics, about the more famous of the Olympians, such as the USA men’s and women’s basketball teams, reportedly paying $15 million to rent out an 800-room hotel for the entirety of the Games for themselves, their families and support personnel and you think it’s all become a little overblown and ostentatious. But USA Weightlifting probably budgeted around $400,00 for its Olympians. Reeves recalled her gold medal effort in Uzbekistan and how the hotel she stayed in served “horse meat.” But, she added, “There was plenty of pasta and rice, and some really good chocolate pudding.”
But to talk to Reeves three years ago was to already know she wouldn’t mind sleeping on a cardboard bed in the Olympic Village.
She noted that she eats healthy, only drinking, “Water, orange juice and milk.”
Asked what she does on a day off from training, she answered, “Work in the yard or clean out my car.”
How responsible is Reeves? When she won the world championship in Uzbekistan, the afternoon after she flew home found her “at my job at Chick-fil-A.”
And did we mention she was a 4.0 student at Notre Dame?
She hasn’t done this completely on her own, of course. Her family has been there every step of the way. Fauer deserves much credit for her workout routines, which noticeably include lighter, shorter workouts than the ones favored by her competitors’ coaches.
As she told one news outlet after the win: “I dedicate this medal to everybody who had a hand in helping me get here - my coach, my family, my gym. It takes a village to get here, and I’m truly blessed and grateful for those who have helped me get here.”
She also told the AP, “I hope that this can inspire any young girl who wants to do this. I think to be a representative in this sport means a lot, and I’m proud to have that role.”
A victory parade and road signs celebrating what is almost certainly Chattanooga's first individual Olympic gold medal winner can’t come soon enough.
(Mark Wiedmer can be reached at mwiedmer@mccallie.org)