IWF tested new 2×2 format in Lausanne: inaugural competition won by refugee pair Mora and Keshavarz
The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) tested a new 2×2 Mixed Team Event in Lausanne on 29 August 2026, an experimental format in which one woman and one man compete as a single team in short elimination matches. Among eight teams, victory went to Ramiro Mora and Fatemah Keshavarz of the IWF Refugee Team, who outperformed the Romanian representatives in the final. According to the Inside the Games report, the competition was completed in just over two hours, while each individual match was designed to combine the classic snatch and clean and jerk disciplines with time pressure, tactical weight selection and joint scoring. For now, the IWF is not presenting 2×2 as a replacement for the standard competition model, but as an experiment intended to determine whether weightlifting can gain a shorter, more dynamic team format that is easier for spectators to understand. Positive reactions from athletes, coaches and sports officials in Lausanne have therefore opened the way for further testing of the concept.
Eight teams and an elimination system in just over two hours
According to the available report from the event, two teams from Switzerland, two from Germany, two from France, one from Romania and the IWF Refugee Team competed in Lausanne. The programme began with quarter-final matches, continued with the semi-finals, and concluded with the third-place match and the final. A total of eight head-to-head matches were held, giving the entire event a rhythm significantly different from conventional competitions in which a larger number of athletes take turns stepping onto the platform within a weight category. In the new model, each team consists of one female lifter and one male lifter, and their performances are combined into a joint result. Such a structure means that an individual attempt does not determine only an athlete's personal placing, but directly changes the position of the entire pair.
The IWF designed the competition as a series of short matches in which the teams had three attempts in the snatch and three attempts in the clean and jerk. After the pair was introduced and the opening weights were selected, a five-minute snatch phase followed, then a two-minute break and another five minutes for the clean and jerk, according to Inside the Games. With the schedule arranged in this way, a match could be decided in just over a quarter of an hour, without the long interruptions and waiting periods characteristic of major championships. Time therefore became an integral part of the tactics: athletes and coaches had to decide when to request a heavier weight, how much risk to accept and how quickly to react to the opposing pair's result. The IWF highlighted precisely this combination of speed, strategy and team responsibility as the main difference from the traditional competition format.
GAMX enabled joint scoring of women and men
The key technical element of the new format was the GAMX points system, which the IWF introduced in April 2026 as an official scoring system alongside the existing Robi Points. According to the federation's explanation, GAMX was developed so that the results of lifters of different body masses and sexes could be compared on a common statistical scale. The model was developed by Professor Marianne Huebner of Michigan State University on the basis of a peer-reviewed scientific approach and data from major international competitions. The system separately evaluates performance in the snatch, clean and jerk and total result, while also taking the athlete's body mass into account, which means that the same number of kilograms lifted does not automatically produce the same number of points for all competitors. This ability to compare performances was particularly important for the 2×2 concept because it allows women's and men's results to contribute equally to the team's joint performance.
A scientific paper by Marianne Huebner and Tim Cole, published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, describes a model that converts men's and women's results onto the same points scale after adjusting for body mass. The authors state that GAMX can be particularly useful in mixed team competitions precisely because it avoids simply adding together the absolute kilograms lifted, which in such a format would disadvantage lighter categories and women's results. When officially presenting the system, the IWF also emphasised that GAMX supports innovative formats in which both sexes contribute to the same team result. The new system thus became more than a statistical addition: in Lausanne it served as infrastructure without which comparable and transparent mixed scoring would have been much more difficult to implement. Its practical value is especially evident in matches in which a single missed or successful weight can change the points balance within a short period of time.
Tactics are no longer only about the heaviest possible weight
In traditional weightlifting, the choice of weight is already one of the most important parts of competition strategy, but the 2×2 format adds a time limit and the obligation to continuously monitor the joint result to that decision. In Lausanne, the decision was therefore not only about how much an athlete could lift, but also when it was worth attempting a heavier weight and whether a safer attempt was more valuable than a risky attack for more points. Because GAMX converts successful attempts into points adjusted for body mass and sex, a coach can consider which member of the pair provides the greater relative benefit to the team in a particular discipline. According to the description of the experimental competition, the choice between the snatch and clean and jerk for the members of the pair was precisely part of the tactical layer of the new concept. In practice, this means that putting together a team does not depend only on overall strength, but also on the athletes' specific qualities, consistency of attempts, speed of recovery and ability to make decisions under pressure.
This approach also changes the way spectators follow the competition. Instead of waiting for the entire group to finish and calculating the rankings afterwards, the result develops through a direct contest between two teams. Every successful attempt immediately gains broader context because it can reduce or increase the points deficit, while a miss creates an opportunity for the opponents. The elimination system further simplifies the basic question for the spectator: the winner of the match advances, while the loser is eliminated. In this way, the IWF is trying to preserve the technical core of the sport, the snatch and clean and jerk, while at the same time adding drama familiar from other sports with direct knockout matches. Whether such a model can attract a new audience in the long term remains to be determined, but the test in Lausanne provided the federation with the first concrete material for assessment.
Mora and Keshavarz secured the first IWF Refugee Team victory in the new format
The result of the IWF Refugee Team attracted the most attention. Ramiro Mora and Fatemah Keshavarz advanced through the elimination stage of the competition and defeated the Romanian pair in the final, becoming the first winners of the 2×2 Mixed Team Event. The available report does not provide the complete points results of all matches, so the final margins and detailed sequence of every attempt have not been publicly confirmed. Nevertheless, the victory itself carries additional symbolism because it was achieved by a team formed through the IWF's programme for refugee athletes rather than by a national team. The federation launched its first Refugee Team in 2023, and by 2026 the programme had developed into a more permanent part of the international calendar and development activities.
In June 2026, the IWF announced that its refugee team for this season consisted of Ramiro Mora, Clémentine Noumbissi and Fatemah Keshavarz, all based in the United Kingdom and participating in the International Olympic Committee's scholarship programme for refugee athletes. Mora, born in Cuba in 1997, already has experience on the biggest sporting stage: at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, he competed for the Refugee Olympic Team and finished seventh in the men's up to 102 kilogram category with a total of 376 kilograms. The IWF also states that he finished tenth in the up to 96 kilogram category at the 2024 World Championships in Manama, while in 2025 he competed at the World Championships in Førde. His experience from major competitions took on a different role in the 2×2 format because, for the first time, the result was directly shared with a female partner in an elimination match.
Fatemah Keshavarz, born in 2004, is a newer member of the IWF Refugee Team. According to federation data, she represented Iran until 2024, and among her more notable results are the 2023 Asian junior championship title, silver at the senior Asian Championships in the same year and eighth place at the 2024 World Junior Championships in the up to 71 kilogram category. The IWF included Keshavarz in the refugee team for 2026 together with Mora and Noumbissi and announced them for the World Championships in Ningbo, China, which according to the federation's calendar are scheduled from 27 October to 8 November 2026. The victory in Lausanne was therefore not merely an isolated exhibition episode, but also part of their competitive year ahead of the season's biggest IWF event. For Keshavarz, 2×2 also offered a format in which her result is not separated into a distinct women's competition, but instead enters the same team contest together with her male partner.
Lausanne is not the IWF's first attempt with mixed teams
Although the August 2026 event was the premiere of the specific 2×2 concept, the idea of mixed pairs in weightlifting is not entirely new for the IWF. As early as 23 April 2022, the federation organised the first Street Weightlifting competition in Lausanne, also with teams consisting of one woman and one man. Seven teams competed at that time, and because of the different weight categories, the results were recalculated using Robi points. The IWF presented that event as a way to move beyond traditional halls and bring the sport closer to the public in an urban setting. In a later review, the federation stated that mixed teams and competitions outside standard arenas form part of efforts to develop new models for presenting weightlifting.
The difference between the 2022 project and the current 2×2 test is not merely in the name. The new format in Lausanne is structured more strongly around direct elimination matches, a short time frame and GAMX scoring, which was developed specifically to compare performances by athletes of different body masses and sexes on a common scale. In addition, the 2026 test took place in front of senior IWF officials and guests from the wider Olympic movement, showing that the federation wants to assess the concept from both organisational and presentation perspectives. According to Inside the Games, those attending the event included IWF President Mohammed Jalood, Secretary General José Quiñones, First Vice President Ursula Papandrea, Vice President Astrit Hasani and Executive Board members Pyrros Dimas, Florian Sperl and Forrester Osei. Guests also included International Olympic Committee Sports Director Pierre Ducrey and International Table Tennis Federation President Petra Sörling.
The format fits into the IWF's long-term strategy
The experiment with the 2×2 competition is not isolated from the wider strategy of the International Weightlifting Federation. In the IWF Strategic Plan for the 2024-2032 period, unanimously approved by the federation's Congress in 2023, the priorities include event development and the search for new opportunities beyond the traditional way of presenting the sport. The GAMX model itself is directly associated in scientific literature with the possibility of developing mixed team competitions and events at non-traditional locations. Lausanne therefore served as a place where two lines of development came together: a new mathematical scoring system and the need for a format that can be shorter, team-based and better suited to direct viewing.
Forrester Osei, Chair of the IWF Athletes' Commission and a member of the Executive Board, connected the new idea with the development of women's weightlifting during the opening, according to Inside the Games. The emphasis of the 2×2 format is not that women and men merely compete in the same programme, but that they jointly bear responsibility for a single result. This is an important difference from the usual structure of major championships, where categories are strictly separated by sex and body mass. In the experimental pair, both members depend on each other, and a tactical mistake or successful attempt by one competitor immediately changes the position of the other. It is precisely this interdependence that could become the most recognisable element of the format if the IWF decides to continue its development.
Support from the Olympic environment, but no decision on official status
According to the report from Lausanne, IOC Sports Director Pierre Ducrey welcomed the initiative and assessed that the IWF was moving in the right direction with the proposal for a mixed competition. Such a reaction is important in the context of the broader Olympic sports landscape, where mixed disciplines have gained greater visibility in recent years, but it does not in itself mean that 2×2 will become an Olympic discipline or part of the standard World Championships programme. The IWF has not announced a decision on the format's official competitive status, nor has a deadline been confirmed by which the experiment might move into the regular calendar. The federation currently describes it as an exhibition and development project. Any possible change to the official rules, qualification system or programme of major championships would require additional decisions by the competent bodies.
Positive reactions from athletes and coaches nevertheless give the federation a reason to continue testing. According to the IWF, participants described the format as exciting, innovative and tactically interesting, while the short duration of the matches maintained a constant competitive rhythm. For organisers, another potential advantage is that an entire tournament with eight teams can be completed in significantly less time than a typical programme at a major international competition. On the other hand, further tests will have to show how fair the format is across different combinations of body masses, how well spectators understand GAMX points, how much the pressure of the time limit affects technical execution and whether the model can be standardised for larger competitions. Without answers to those questions, 2×2 remains an interesting experiment rather than a finished alternative to the existing system.
Sources:
- Inside the Games - report from the inaugural IWF 2×2 Mixed Team Event in Lausanne, competition format, field composition, final result and officials' reactions (link)
- International Weightlifting Federation - official announcement on the introduction of the GAMX points system and its application in mixed team formats (link)
- International Weightlifting Federation - official announcement of the IWF Refugee Team roster for 2026 and information about Ramiro Mora, Fatemah Keshavarz and the programme for refugee athletes (link)
- International Weightlifting Federation - report from the first Street Weightlifting competition in Lausanne in 2022 and the earlier use of mixed pairs (link)
- Journal of Sports Sciences / Taylor and Francis - scientific paper by Marianne Huebner and Tim Cole on the GAMX model for comparing results according to body mass and sex (link)
- International Weightlifting Federation - IWF Strategic Plan 2024-2032 and the development of new models of competition and presentation of the sport (link)