In her Olympic debut, Jourdan Delacruz had high hopes for a medal at Tokyo 2020.

However, the 23-year-old Wylie native came up just short, finishing seventh overall for the U.S. Weightlifting Team.

Delacruz was the first participant to compete for the U.S. team, lifting at the 49 kg (108 lbs) bodyweight class.

She started with a good snatch of 83 kg on her and followed it up with an 86 kg second lift. That was just three kilograms off from her US record 89 kg set three months ago at the Pan American Games.

Delacruz tried to match her record with her third lift, which would have put her in second place overall. She celebrated as the weights hit the ground before learning two of three judges had ruled it “no lift.” After a challenge, the call was upheld due to a  “press-out.”

“Mentally, I was ok,” Delacruz said after the final snatch lift. “It didn’t really bother me clean and jerking. I’m still really proud of myself.”

With the podiums ranking the best-combined weight of the snatch and clean and jerk lifts, Delacruz put herself in a great position to medal in her first games still in third place.

“I feel like, looking back, I put everything that I had out there,” she said. “Sometimes things like this just happen, and it sucks, but I don’t regret anything.”

However, she wasn’t able to maintain that pace as she failed all three of her clean and jerk lifts of 108 kg. That lift was also three kilograms fewer than the number she completed at the Pan American games three months before.

Delacruz told the press afterward that she had completed the lift in training, but just couldn’t get it done on the platform.

The 108 kg clean and jerk would have finished her tied for third place in the weight class.

“It felt a little bit heavier, but warmup was really good, so sometimes it just doesn’t pull out on the platform,” she explained.

In the event, China’s Zhizu Hou won gold with an Olympic record total of 210kg, followed by India’s Mirabai Chanu (202kg) for silver and Indonesia’s Windy Aisah (194kg) for bronze.

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By Kyle Grondin • [email protected]