There are 61 athletes in the five women’s weightlifting classes at the Paris Olympics.

Mary Theisen-Lappen is the oldest one.

At 33, Theisen-Lappen doesn’t have the orthodox background of a lifter who began as a teenager and reached Olympian status as a young adult. Instead, the woman who has spent the past few years readying for her first Olympics in Bloomington recognized her weightlifting ability much later than most. But it hasn’t stopped her from becoming — quite literally — one of the strongest women on the planet.

Olympics: If Team Indiana was a separate nation, it would rank 12th in medal standings

From track to weightlifting

"I think I’m going to start coaching a woman who can make the next Olympic team."

That’s what Bloomington resident Wil Fleming told his wife on April 17, 2020, after Theisen-Lappen messaged him on Instagram and asked for Fleming to be her coach. Theisen-Lappen had competed in only one international competition at the time.

Just a few years earlier, Theisen-Lappen was approaching her 30s and had never done a competitive weightlifting meet in her life. She had retired from track and field, where she won a Division II national championship in discus at Winona State before transferring to Indiana State and becoming an All-American shot-putter and thought her athletic career was behind her.

“I was pretty much done with that part of my life,” she said. “Like competing and, sounds dumb, but working hard. I just wanted to go for a walk.”

While Theisen-Lappen was back home in Wisconsin, Kyle Rothbauer suggested she get into weightlifting. Rothbauer, a high school friend, was the first person to recognize her Olympic potential, and he asked her repeatedly to immerse herself in weightlifting. In 2017, she finally abided and started working with Rothbauer at Thirteenth Strong in Altoona, Wisc.

Theisen-Lappen quickly found competitive weightlifting was akin to track and field. In throwing events, like shot put and discus, athletes get three attempts to throw as far as they can. In weightlifting, athletes are given three attempts at snatches (lifting the barbell from the ground to overhead in one continuous motion) and clean-and-jerks (moving the barbell to a racked position, then raising it overhead). The heaviest attempt from both types of lifts are added to determine a lifter’s total at a meet.

Theisen-Lappen enjoys the individuality of these sports, as she likes working at something that can be measured. At any given moment, she can go back and see her growth from a few months ago, to last year, to back in 2017.

Theisen-Lappen first competed in January 2018 at the Team Spartacus Winter Open in Mendota Heights, Minn. Later that year, she started training through a transitional athlete program led by Mike Gattone, USA Weightlifting’s senior director of sport performance and coaching education. Gattone — whose Forza Weightlifting Club is based in the Chicago area — recruited Theisen-Lappen from a video of her weightlifting while she was still in college. Theisen-Lappen described her technique in the video as “not good,” but the heavy weight she lifted was enough to pique Gattone’s interest.

After two years of competition, it became clear Theisen-Lappen was one of America’s best lifters while still being an assistant track and field coach at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. The Eau Claire, Wisc., native had been lifting competitively for a little over two years while coaching at the Division III school. The COVID-19 pandemic furloughed Theisen-Lappen from her coaching job. With nothing but time on her hands, Theisen-Lappen shifted all her energy to weightlifting.

“That was a trial period on whether it was a good idea to quit my job or not,” Theisen-Lappen said. “So I went back to work that fall, figured out basically that year how I was going to make it work financially and then that was my last year coaching.”

She contacted Fleming, who would congratulate her here and there after meets. Fleming began 1Kilo in Bloomington in 2018 after co-owning Force Fitness and Performance for a decade. A Bloomington resident since kindergarten, Fleming started a weightlifting club at Force Fitness in 2012. He found he was drawn to coaching weightlifting more than the other aspects of training, so he sold his gym and began 1Kilo, a weightlifting company and team based out of Bloomington.

“Weightlifting as a sport is really tactical,” Fleming said. “There’s a lot of decisions that the coach has to make that can put their athlete at an advantage and can put the other athletes at a disadvantage. So that was just really fun to me, that I got to see it from the beginning, where it’s the training, all the way through the competition.”

Theisen-Lappen met Fleming — who was an All-American hammer thrower at IU — through Instagram’s immense weightlifting community, and she decided to move forward with him as her trainer. She began virtual sessions in April 2020, and Fleming taught her new movements, new complexes and alternate training regimens. Theisen-Lappen also felt better physically when she wasn’t coaching track and field, a sport that requires a lot of standing outside as a coach.

Under Fleming, Theisen-Lappen’s rapid growth continued, and it was time to get serious about qualifying for the 2024 Olympic Games.

A long 18 months

When Theisen-Lappen moved to Bloomington with her husband, Casey, on July 8, 2022, she wasn’t able to lift. Five days earlier, Theisen-Lappen missed a lift and the weights fell on her leg at the National Championships in Las Vegas. The impact sprained both of her ankles to go along with a calf strain. Immediately after giving up coaching track and moving to Indiana, Theisen-Lappen couldn’t even do what she moved for.

“I’m like, ‘Did I just sell my house to not be able to lift weights anymore?’” Theisen-Lappen said. “ … I was like, ‘Did we just make a horrible mistake?’”

The injuries caused Theisen-Lappen to miss the 2022 World Championships in December, which was the first Olympic qualifying event of the 2024 cycle. To be eligible for qualification, weightlifters were required to lift in five of the 15 qualifying meets, with two of them — the 2023 World Championships and the 2024 IWF World Cup — being mandatory for qualification.

By the time the Pan American Championships arrived in March 2023, Theisen-Lappen had recovered and was ready to start the qualifying process. At the meet, Theisen-Lappen lifted 158 kg (348 lbs.) on her third clean-and-jerk attempt, which was the best at the event by five kg (11 lbs.).

When added with her 114 kg (251 lbs.) snatch lift, Theisen-Lappen won the event with a 272 kg (600 lbs.) total, coming in one kg higher than American Sarah Robles, a two-time bronze medalist in the super heavyweight class.

Beating Robles — a five-time winner at the Pan American Championships — proved Theisen-Lappen was legit. Theisen-Lappen got her first international win at the same event in Nov. 2021, but Robles wasn’t competing as it was just three months after the Olympics. Winning against the woman who was America’s best super heavyweight for nearly a decade showed Theisen-Lappen was ready for the journey to Paris.

That first qualifying meet set Theisen-Lappen up well for the rest of the process. Her total lift of 283 kg (624 lbs.)  — 120 snatch, 163 clean-and-jerk — at December’s International Weightlifting Federation Grand Prix II in Doha, Qatar won the event and just about sealed the deal. It became official when she placed fifth with a 274 kg (604 lbs.) total at the mandatory IWF World Cup in Phuket, Thailand in April.

“I wasn't surprised or anything,” Theisen-Lappen said about qualifying. “I would have been much more devastated if I didn't make the team because that was the plan. I felt just relieved that it was over.”

It took an 18-month process for Theisen-Lappen to qualify for Paris. The pressure of all those events was draining for her to experience for the first time.

“It’s interesting because a lot of your impressions from making the Olympic team come from the swimming trials or the track and field trials — which are on TV — and it’s that one thing to go,” Fleming said. “And this was just like a long, slow, steady burn. Whereas maybe track happens in ‘x’ number of minutes, this was 18 months where it was like, okay, you could kind of see where it was headed. … So we didn’t get that big elation, where it was like, ‘We did it.’”

Theisen-Lappen persevered through tears and exhaustion to make it to Paris, where she has big plans.

Olympics/Being a competitor

After a competitive weightlifter completes a powerful lift, they typically let out a strong expression once they throw the barbell to the ground. Roars, flexes and fist pumps are among the many ways competitive lifters exude the joy that comes with completing a heavy lift.

But when Theisen-Lappen set the American clean-and-jerk record in 2022, she smiled briefly as she threw the 163 kg (359.4 lbs.) weight to the floor before walking away. No roar. No flex. No fist pump. No acknowledgement whatsoever to the crowd at the North American Open Series 1 in Columbus, Ohio.

Fleming made her go back and wave to the crowd before walking away entirely, but the moment encapsulates who she is. Although reserved and not very demonstrative, Theisen-Lappen embraces competition. It’s what keeps her going.

It’s why on July 8 — exactly two years since she moved to Bloomington — it didn’t matter that Theisen-Lappen struggled to string together successful snatch lifts in the northeast corner of Iron Pit Gym. Although it was one of her last sessions before she left for Paris, Fleming knows she’ll be ready when the moment arrives. She always has been.

“She’s a super competitor,” Fleming said. “So every single time in this qualification process where I said, ‘Hey Mary, you have to make this lift to medal, to win, to make the Olympic team,’ she did it. She comes to compete, so it’s my belief (that) when we get to Paris, and there’s a lift on the line that’s gonna get her a medal, I think she’ll make it.”

Theisen-Lappen embraces her newness to competitive weightlifting and the fact she’s the oldest woman lifting in Paris. The draw of the Olympics is that all these athletes have different backgrounds, but somehow, they’ve made it to the highest level of their sport. Theisen-Lappen is someone who didn’t do a competitive meet until she was 27, but now she’s one of the world’s best weightlifters.

“I think it’s kind of a cool story,” she said of being the oldest women’s Olympic weightlifter. “It’s not your typical, ‘I started weightlifting when I was 8 years old and now I’m going to the Olympics.’ ... So I think it’s kind of a cool story, even though there’s days where I do feel every bit of my age.”

Theisen-Lappen originally planned to retire after the 2025 US Nationals, as she wanted to end her career in the United States. But now, she’s not sure if that’s still the plan. The 2028 Summer Olympics are in Los Angeles, meaning if Theisen-Lappen competed in those Games, she could retire after, with her last event coming in the country. She’ll be 37 by the time the competition comes around, but she’s not ruling out giving it a go.

“If I’m still improving and I still feel okay, I’ll just go until I’m (done) improving,” Theisen-Lappen said. “If I stop improving, and I just don’t love it, then I’m not going to do it. So just take it one meet at a time, train for each meet, and if I decide that it’s the last one, it’ll be the last one.”

So much of Theisen-Lappen’s journey has been about building confidence, not just gaining strength. There are days when she questions if she should still be lifting competitively, but she just keeps improving.

Building that mental strength and assurance is what got Theisen-Lappen through the grueling qualifying process. It could be what gets her a medal in Paris, which is the expectation.

“Mary, in particular, probably struggles with believing in herself,” Fleming said. “If I told anybody anything that she struggles with, it’s that. But her belief in herself and confidence has grown so much where it’s like, ‘Do I belong? Oh absolutely, I belong.’ And she just demonstrates that all the time.”

To return to Bloomington with a medal, Theisen-Lappen has her work cut out for her.

Chinese weightlifter and 2020 gold medalist Li Wenwen is the large favorite in the super heavyweight class, as it’s been over five years since she hasn’t placed first in an international event she completed. Behind Li is 21-year-old South Korean Park Hye-jeong, who has consistently lifted over 290 kg (639 lbs.) total since the start of 2023.

The clash for bronze will likely come down to Theisen-Lappen, Great Britain’s Emily Campbell and Thailand’s Duangaksorn Chaidee. Theisen-Lappen expects there to be around 50 USA weightlifting fans who she’s met over the past few years to attend the meet in Paris along with about 30 friends and family members of her and Fleming. For her to medal Sunday — the final day of the Olympics — it may take the best lift of her career.

In just seven years, Theisen-Lappen has gone from never being a competitive weightlifter to being one of the strongest women alive. It’s taken a lot of mental, emotional and physical steps to get here, but she’s navigated the pressure to reach the pinnacle of weightlifting.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Mary Theisen-Lappen at 2024 Paris Olympics for women's weightlifting