SAN RAMON — Wes Kitts squatted into a catcher’s stance to grasp 243 pounds of rubber-coated plates and metal in a warehouse tucked into the corner of a San Ramon industrial park.
The beefy Olympic lifter centered himself, let out a sigh and clenched his teeth.
Liftoff.
Kitts hoisted the bulk overhead before quickly dropping it onto a padded floor. He rested, added more weights to the barbell and pushed with renewed vigor. The recent workout lasted into the early evening at California Strength where owner Dave Spitz has built one of the United States’ top weightlifting gyms.
Kitts, 31, is Spitz’s prize lifter who has made the U.S. Olympic team in the 109-kilogram (or 240-pound) category. The United States qualified the maximum number of competitors — four men and four women — for its largest weightlifting team since 1996 in Atlanta.
The event includes two types of lifts, the one-move snatch and the two-move clean and jerk. Competitors get three attempts at each lift with their highest combined total counted in the standings.
When Kitts started in 2013 he had no idea lifters competed in the Olympics: “I was so naive about the sport it caught me by surprise,” he said.
His coach, who produced three of the 10 U.S. lifters at the Pan American Games last year, knew the intricacies. Spitz worked as a finance banker in San Francisco after throwing the discus at USC. In 2004, he began training seriously and qualified for the 2008 U.S. Olympic trials.
Spitz failed to reach the Beijing Games and soon realized his calling was training others. A Danville native, he opened an East Bay gym that has attracted NFL players, high school athletes and a contingent of promising Olympic-class men and women lifters.
Spitz recruited Kitts to California in 2016 after seeing a video of the 5-foot-11, 220-pound former running back lifting at an event in his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee.
“He was very raw but there was just so much potential that I couldn’t resist,” Spitz said. “That bar was moving way too fast for the amount of weight on it.”
Kitts had played football at Austin Peay near Nashville then returned to Knoxville in 2013 to open a small gym inside a batting cage. He started competing as a weightlifter in CrossFit events.
Monday night, he’ll be lifting at the Tokyo International Forum where concerts, ballet performances, musicals and film previews usually are held.
Even though he is the Pan American Games champion, Kitts probably does not have a realistic chance to win a medal.
He finished 14th at the 2019 World Championships and is ranked 12th among the 43 lifters in his Olympic division. U.S. weightlifting officials say CJ Cummings has the best chance to get the first men’s Olympic medal since 1984.
But Spitz, the country’s international weightlifting coach, calls Kitts special.
“Wes is one of one,” he said. “I would be surprised if he doesn’t have the world record currently for a clean athlete.”
Kitts’ best is a total of 399 kilograms, which he achieved in 2019. The top-ranked lifter, Simon Martirosyan of Armenia, has a best of 435 kilograms.
The U.S. weightlifting community is outspoken about the sport’s reputation for corruption and rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs. In the weeks leading to the Tokyo Games, International Weightlifting Federation board members rejected a reformist constitution that would have tightened its drug-testing system.
The action could spell the end of Olympic weightlifting, which was included in the first modern Games in 1896 in Athens. The International Olympic Committee has given the sport a provisional status for the 2024 Paris Games because it has refused to address its drug problems and corruption.
“We would love for it to be completely transparent because we work so hard,” Spitz said. “It’s so unfortunate what we are up against, not just athletes but state-sponsored programs that are protected on high. The athletes are being engineered to win.”
A day after Spitz spoke, officials provisionally suspended European weightlifting champion Dmytro Chumak for allegedly trying to bribe his way out of a drug test. He is not among the 43 athletes listed as qualified for the Tokyo Games.
The Ukrainian was considered one of the serious medal contenders in Kitts’ weight category.
Last week, Daniyar Ismayilov of Turkey, the 2016 Olympic silver medalist in the smaller 69-kilogram category, failed a drug test and also is out of the Games.
In June, the independent testing agency overseeing weightlifting’s drug-testing program before the Olympics charged the former chief of the International Weightlifting Federation with “complicity and tampering” concerning doping offenses. The charges relate to almost 150 “unresolved” drug cases from 2009-2019.
Romania, Thailand and Malaysia already have been banned from the Tokyo weightlifting competition because of repeated drug violations.
“The field is leveling more than ever before,” said Mike Gattone, USA Weightlifting’s senior director of sports performance. “It’s our only chance.”
Gattone said American coaches have been frustrated by the lack of success since the United States dominated in the 1950s and ‘60s.
“After all these years you have to ask, ‘Are we just horrible coaches? Do we have horrible athletes? Do we have a horrible methodology?’ ” Gattone said. “Now we’re seeing that’s not the case,” as drug practices elsewhere are exposed.
A caveat: Many athletes, coaches and officials who have professed innocence — the Lance Armstrong saga comes to mind — were later found to be among the biggest cheaters.
Spitz wants international officials to save hair samples for 20 years to review once testing methods improve. The inference is some athletes are circumventing the system by using substances that cannot be detected in a drug test or can subvert a positive test result.
“We’re ascending as a country and the rest of the nations are starting to get caught more frequently so it could be perfect timing for us,” Spitz said.
In the meantime, Kitts has more immediate concerns. He had peaked last summer but Olympic organizers postponed the Games because of the coronavirus pandemic. The extra year of training has taken a toll.
“My knees have been barking for a while,” said Kitts, who with his wife has an infant son. “They are ready for a break.”
He has used legal remedies for treatment, including platelet-rich plasma therapy that injects a person’s blood to accelerate the healing of tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints.
After the Olympics, Kitts, who plans to return to Tennessee, has tried to ignore the aches long enough to do well in Tokyo.
“His body is fighting with every ounce of its being just to stay together,” Spitz said.
