The maximum 20-strong line-up includes six Olympians, two junior world record-holders and the oldest woman ever to lift for the US at an IWF World Championships.

Despite setting that age record at 38, CiCi Kyle will be making her debut at a World Championships in the 45 kilograms category.

She made her first international appearance for the US in 2020, having come to the sport late in life, and has won gold and silver respectively at the past two Pan American Championships.

“I want to make it one and done," Kyle said after her Pan American performance in July, indicating that she wants to win a medal in Colombia and then retire from competition.

"If I win the World Championships I’m out!"

The USA Weightlifting team announcement comes as the sport gears up for a busy seven-week period that features senior and junior championships on four continents.

The IWF World Championships start on December 5 - the first qualifying event for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Kyle is one of four women coached by the same man, Spencer Arnold, who also coaches Canada’s Olympic champion Maude Charron.

It is believed to be the first time a personal coach has been responsible for so many athletes at a single IWF World Championships.

Arnold's other athletes are Jourdan Delacruz at 49kg, the weight at which she made steady improvement before failing to make a total in Tokyo last year, Shayla Moore Hutchins at 55kg, and Kate Vibert (formerly Nye), a Tokyo 2020 silver medallist at 76kg who drops down to the Paris Olympic weight of 71kg.

Vibert, a senior and junior world champion in 2019 and a junior world record-holder, had knee surgery in July and will be competing overseas for the first time in more than a year - as will the male Olympians CJ Cummings and Wes Kitts.

Two other female Olympic Games lifters are heading for Bogotá, Mattie Rogers at 81kg and the super-heavyweight Sarah Robles, who won bronze in Tokyo and at Rio 2016.

In the men's team Cummings moves up to his heaviest weight category yet, 81kg, having finished ninth at 73kg in Tokyo.

Kitts, eighth at 109kg in Tokyo, also moves to a Paris weight class, dropping to 102kg.

Harrison Maurus, another Arnold athlete who finished fourth in Tokyo and was a youth world champion in 2017, has retired from competition to focus on his medical studies.

Among the younger lifters, much will be expected of the teenagers Olivia Reeves and Hampton Morris.

Reeves, 19, won silver at 71kg at the IWF Junior World Championships this year and competes at the same weight in Bogotá.

Morris holds youth and junior world records at 61kg and is also youth and junior world champion at that weight, at which he will lift in Colombia.

Ryan Sester, selected at 102kg, will be in action this weekend at another landmark event when Canada hosts the North American Series 2 - with 239 athletes entered - for the first time in a collaboration with the United States.

"The last time we had a competition with this many athletes was decades back," said Craig Walker, President of the Canadian Weightlifting Federation.

"After this weekend, maybe more Canadians will look to the NAO Series events in the US as a pathway for their own growth in the sport."

The star of the show in Calgary is expected to be Charron, making her first appearance at the Paris weight category of 59kg.

When she won the 64kg gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in early August, Charron weighed only 61kg and was already looking forward to competing at a lower body weight.

Other notable entries in Calgary include Tali Darsigny, who won bronze at 59kg in Birmingham and moves up to 64kg, and the talented teenager Brayan Ibanez, who will be 16 on Sunday (September 18), in the 81kg.

Walker said, "The seeds of this event were planted about three years ago when we were looking for more opportunities to work together in meaningful ways.

"We shared a view that both Canadian and American weightlifting would benefit from pushing each other to succeed on multiple fronts.

"Our team is coming off of strong performances in Birmingham and Bogotá [Pan American Championships], and we can build on that success here as we prepare for the World Championships in December.

"The Americans are fielding a very strong team in Bogotá.

"The pressure is very much on us to do the same and build on earlier success."

While the athletes are busy training and competing, it is also a busy time for the IWF, whose Executive Board is meeting frequently to discuss ways of pushing through reforms before Paris qualifying begins.

Should their attempts fail, weightlifting’s exclusion from the Los Angeles 2028 Games will be beyond recall, according to the IWF general secretary Antonio Urso.