Apr. 9, 2009- Lindenwood University announced this week that it has added men's and women's Olympic weightlifting to its varsity athletics department. The new programs, the 45th and 46th teams in the largest collegiate athletics department in the United States, will begin play during the 2009-10 school year.

Weightlifting was one of the sports in the original Olympic Games in 1896 and has been a regular event in every Olympics since 1920. In 2000 women's weightlifting was competed for the first time in the Olympics. Today, there are eight weight classes for men and seven for women.

Collegiate weightlifting is a year-round sport with the biggest event being the National Collegiate Championships which take place in April. Along with adding the sport to its varsity department, the Lindenwood weightlifting program will likely be named a United States Olympic Weightlifting Collegiate Training Center.

The head coach of the Lindenwood program will be Derrick Johnson, a weightlifter and coach in the St. Louis area.

In college, Johnson was a four-time All-American and a three-time National Collegiate Champion. He set the American Collegiate record holder for the 62kg weight class. Among his other accomplishments as a competitor was being a two-time American Open Champion, a two-time Senior National Champion, and participated in the 2008 Olympic Trials.

Johnson, who is a Lindenwood alumnus, has coaching experience as the head coach for Lift for Life Gym in St. Louis. He received the Arnold Schwarzenegger Weightlifting Championships Coach of the Year award in 2006 and 2007 and coaches the top two prospects for the Youth Olympics in 2010.

With the addition of Olympic weightlifting, Lindenwood now sponsors 30 sports that are competed in the Olympics. In 2008, two athletes with Lindenwood ties competed in the Beijing Olympics in Sean McLelland (International Skeet) and Donald Thomas (High Jump).