London 2012: The Countdown Series: Weightlifting Preview!

It's only 30 days left until the first day of the London Olympics! This is a preview of the weightlifting at the London games.

The weightlifting venue, like the boxing, wrestling, judo and taekwondo venue at the London games will be the ExCeL Convention Centre (pictured).

244 men and women representing 69 countries will participate in this year's event.

In the men's 56kg and under class, defending Olympic champion Long Qingquan is going for his second in that class-tying Charles Vinci and Haili Mutlu for most wins in that class with two each. Liao Hui is looking to do the same thin gin the 63-69kg class; with his win will tie Waldemar Baszanowski for most wins in that class. Ilya Ilin is looking to tie Arkady Vorobyov for most wins in the 86-94kg class, while Andrei Aramnau and Matthias Steiner are looking to do the same thing in their respective classes. Only Pyrros Dimas and Naim Suleymanoglu are the only Olympic weightlifters to win three in a certain weight class.

On the women's side, Chen Yonqing and Lui Chunhong are trying to join Suleymanoglu and Dimas by winning three in their respective classes. Chen won the 58kg class at Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008, and the same for Liu, who has won the last two Olympic golds in the 69kg.

Up next: a look at triathlon.