Meet Mike Gattone, the Man Leading Team USA in Paris

Mike Gattone is USA Weightlifting's Senior Director of Sport Performance. From Aug. 7-11, he'll be leading the United States weightlifting team at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Follow Gattone and all five of the weightlifting athletes who will represent their country here.

Mike Gattone has been a staple in the weightlifting community for decades. He has held the titles of coach, official, USA Weightlifting and International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) board member, national and international meet director, and now senior director of sport performance USA Weightlifting. But first, he was an athlete. 

Gattone, a native of the south side of Chicago, entered his first weightlifting meet back in 1980 at the age of 16. Back then he was fully set on pursuing track & field as a collegiate athlete and eventually walked on as a hammer thrower at the University of Arizona. He split time between track and field and weightlifting in Arizona until his athletic course changed following an invite to a under-23 weightlifting camp at the Olympic Training Center in 1985. Gattone started lifting at Sayre Park that summer. It was his first experience in a club purely meant for Olympic weightlifting, and not a general weight room. He decided to transfer back home to University of Illinois Chicago and finish his undergrad degree while lifting at Sayre Park. Following graduation, he accepted a graduate assistant strength and conditioning position at the University of Kansas. There he started a weightlifting club and lifted in meets. For the next few years he was back and forth between Kansas and Chicago. He was building his coaching resumé while simultaneously coaching discus, shot put, hammer, and javelin at a local community college.

In 1990, at 26 years old, Gattone was offered a paid position in Peoria, Illinois, at Great Plains Sports Science and Training Center. The center was a not-for-profit with the goal of teaching at-risk kids Olympic sports that they couldn’t learn in school, and weightlifting was the first sport they focused on. Gattone quickly put the gym on the map. Within the first four years, he hosted the 1991 Junior National Championships, the 1992 Olympic Trials, and the 1993 Senior National Championships. Because of his demonstrated experience directing meets, he was brought in as the competition director for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

While in Atlanta, he met his future student, Tara Nott. She had been a collegiate soccer player and wanted to learn weightlifting. When he moved back to Chicago, Nott moved as well and Gattone became her personal coach. Just four years later at Sydney 2000, the first Olympic Games where the International Olympic Committee allowed women to compete in weightlifting, Nott finished runner-up at 48 kg, but following a positive doping test from Izabela Dragneva, Nott became the United States’ first women’s weightlifting gold medalist.

Soon after the Games, Gattone started working for the Chicago Bulls as an assistant strength and conditioning coach under Al Vermeil. In late 2001, he accepted a position with the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs as Manager of Coaching Programs. After two years, he went back to Chicago and opened his own gym for sports performance, including weightlifting. Gattone added on a role as High Performance and Coaching Education Director for USA Weightlifting and taught at a local community college in these years. He was also able to run the 2007 U.S. Nationals and the 2009 Pan-American Championships in Chicago.

After managing all of these positions, Gattone became a Manager of Sports Intelligence for Gatorade in 2010. He worked with organizations across the NCAA, NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL specifically across the midwest and up the east coast. Over seven years with Gatorade, he made relationships throughout the sports industry and was sideline to countless major sporting events.

In 2017, Gattone was recruited to come back to USA Weightlifting by weightlifting legend and three-time Olympic medalist Pyrros Dimas. Dimas was the technical director and needed an assistant who was well-versed in the sport. In less than a year, Gattone earned his current role as Senior Director of Sports Performance where he leads the high performance side of USAW. Since returning to USAW, Gattone has touched the careers of and helped lead into competition some of the best weightlifters in the world in recent years, including Olympians CJ Cummings, Jourdan Delacruz, Harrison Maurus, Sarah Robles, Mattie Rogers, Kate Vibert, and Caine Wilkes.

No matter the position, Mike Gattone can always be found in what he calls his happy place - a gym coaching young athletes towards their dreams.