The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) announced today that the 2019 IWF Youth World Championships will be held in Anaheim, California. This is the second IWF World Championship that will be hosted by the southern California city in three years.
The Youth World Championships will feature the top weightlifters around the world 17-years-old and younger. Phil Andrews, USA Weightlifting CEO said, “We truly appreciate the trust of the Weightlifting community to host another World Championship level event, this time for the best youth in the World. There is no better place in the U.S. than Anaheim to hold a Youth Championship with Disneyland right across the street. We look forward to welcoming the World’s strongest teenagers to Anaheim in two years.”
Later this year in December, Anaheim will host the 2017 USAW American Open Championships followed immediately by the 2017 IWF World Championships.
This latest announcement of the Youth Worlds continues a trend of more and more international weightlifting events coming to the United States. In 2015, Houston, Texas, hosted the 2015 IWF World Championships. Later this month, Miami will be hosting the 2017 Pan American Championships in Miami, Florida.
The IWF also announced that the 2019 IWF Junior World Championships will be held in Suva, Fiji. It will be the first time since 1993 that a country from the Oceania region will host an IWF World Championship event.
The announcements came during the IWF Executive Board meeting held prior to the start of the 2017 IWF Junior World Championships in Tokyo, Japan. The IWF and the weightlifting world in general was rocked earlier this week after the International Olympic Committee reduced the number of weight categories and the number of athlete quotas for the 2020 Olympics.
