If everything goes to plan next week at the Anaheim Convention Center  in California, where the World Championships  are due to start on Tuesday (November 28) Cummings will not be alone.

Between Thursday and Sunday USA Weightlifting (USAW) is hoping for as many as seven medals, four for women and three for men.

That is an ambitious target, some might say unrealistic, given that the last female medallist, Cheryl Haworth, was in 2005, eight years after the last male, Wes Barnett.

The wait for an American world champion is 48 years and counting for men, 23 years for women; and the last time the United States won three World Championships medals was a quarter of a century ago.

Cummings himself said, "I am aware that things were not so good a few years ago, that we haven’t had winners for a very long time."

Those looking for a simple explanation for USAW’s optimism would say their prospects look so good only because doping bans and North Korea’s relationship with Donald Trump have kept so many top-level rivals away from Anaheim.

But that is far too simplistic: at least three of those seven would have been contenders regardless of who is competing.

And there are many good reasons why the US, which had a record medal tally at the senior and youth Pan American Championships this year, can now look forward to international championships with a level of confidence that has been missing for decades - not least the fact that they expect to compete on level terms in a clean sport.

The Americans are benefiting from the boom in competitive fitness, especially CrossFit, that has helped to fuel a huge increase in the number of people lifting weights, which is estimated by a former USAW President at 20 million people throughout the US.

The Americans are making good use of ideas from Russia, Britain, Germany and at home, not just in weightlifting.

And most important of all they have a plan, and the right people in the right places to make it happen.

In key positions are Ursula Garza Papandrea, President of USAW, the first woman to become an IWF vice-president, the highest qualified female coach in the US, and an adjunct professor of political science who speaks Spanish and Russian; the "can-do" chief executive Phil Andrews, a Briton who moved to the US to marry a woman he met at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, by which time he had never worked in weightlifting; and Pyrros Dimas, one of the most decorated weightlifters in the sport’s long history.

There are many, many more who have played important roles in creating and sustaining the upward trajectory of weightlifting in the US a trajectory that, Andrews hopes, will end with America back where it was way back in the 1950s: at the top.

Andrews started the eight-year plan last year when he took office, expecting it to bear fruit up to and beyond the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. 

To help his team understand the plan and what it could lead to, he asked all of them to read Rod Ellingworth’s book, Project Rainbow: How British Cycling Reached the Top of the World.

"British Cycling went from being in the middle of the pack to the top of the world in about eight years," Andrews, who now has American citizenship, at USAW’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, said.

"Members of our high performance team met with Sir Dave Brailsford, the man who led British Cycling, to talk about what they did, their incremental improvements, and some of our strategies are remarkably similar to those employed by British Cycling.

"We have learned from others. There are hallmarks of German weightlifting in what we are doing, the way they get so much from their talent base.

"We have learned from the Russians in the way they manage personal coaching leading up to a competition, how they prepare.

"We have talked to Colombia, to the Russians, the Kazakhs, the Chinese about how they recruit - it’s all applicable.

"We have to understand how we can take ideas from what they’re doing, countries with consistent achievement on the international stage.

"And we have to look at other sports, domestically and abroad. Look at USA track and field: they’ve done a great job of being successful in a sport that has also suffered under doping control issues."

The first step in the plan was staff changes, recruiting Dimas and others, and "putting in place a great deal of high-performance structure".

Recruiting athletes of all ages, talent ID, generating sponsorships and funding, creating a strategy to take weightlifting into schools, improving media coverage, and building better relations with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the IWF were others among many aims.

"We need our athletes to be winning medals, and in that respect the future looks good, thanks to Mattie Rogers, Sarah Robles, Jenny Arthur, Maddy Myers, CJ Cummings, Harrison Maurus and others," said Andrews.

All of those, except the injured Myers, are contenders in Anaheim.

With more representatives than they have ever had on IWF Committees and Commissions, the Americans have clearly won back the trust of the IWF.

"We had to, given the way we do doping control, looking at how we can help guide that in the direction we need to go into," said Andrews. 

"It’s not an IWF issue necessarily, it’s an issue culturally as a sport; that finger needs to be pointed directly at us as sports people."

There are already encouraging signs that others are looking to the US for guidance, said Papandrea.

"I have been approached by a couple of other international delegates asking, ‘How do we train clean athletes?’

"That’s a good sign, it shows that there is a real curiosity from countries that have had a doping culture."

Weightlifting is growing faster than any other Olympic sport in the US, having tripled the number of competitive lifters to 27,000 in a few years, with a rise, too, in the number of coaches, technical officials and volunteers.

The American Open Series, devised by Andrews and organised by Pedro Meloni, the senior events manager who joined USAW after his role as weightlifting competition manager at Rio 2016, attracted more than 2,700 entries this year, a world record.

There are as many youth weightlifters in the US now, about 4,000, as there were athletes of all ages 10 years ago.

"That is a huge push in the right direction," said Andrews.

"A lot of growth is down to CrossFit, with whom we have a wonderful relationship.

"There hasn’t been a single entity that has done more for growth in a single sport than Crossfit has done for weightlifting."

That growth itself has created a problem, an unwelcome increase in the number of "national" doping positives, which stand at 19 this year.

"It’s true to say we’ve seen many CrossFit athletes provide positives, although it is certainly not exclusively CrossFit athletes," said Andrews.

"In our sport, rather than CrossFit per se, there is an issue with the tremendous increase in numbers becoming an issue to educate everyone, especially on supplementation.

"We have a very good relationship with USADA (United States Anti-Dopng Agency), and have implemented the Lift Clean program with them, which even tests local competitions unannounced."

The sport’s public image has changed for the better, Andrews believes, despite the current doping problems that have led to nine nations being banned from Anaheim.

"We are seeing a resurgence of the use of Olympic lifts in the United States as a strength and conditioning method, as a fitness method, seeing gyms across the country installing weightlifting equipment," said Andrews.

"The mainstream public are beginning to understand what a snatch is, what a clean and jerk is, and the benefits of those lifts.

"Parents are taking their kids to the gym, and those kids are seeing weightlifting and are able to try and enjoy it themselves.

"There definitely has been a sliding off of the misperception that overhead lifting is dangerous for kids.

"Statistically, weightlifting has one of the lowest injury rates of any Olympic sport."

USAW sends talent spotters to the CrossFit Nationals, successfully recruits athletes from other sports, runs a "try weightlifting for free" weekend, and is trying to gain a foothold in high schools through a "very long-term" project.

Despite the huge growth, recruitment will still be one of the priorities for 2018.

"We must push the sport marketing-wise and ensure those numbers grow again," said Andrews.

Jim Schmitz, one of the most respected coaches in the US,who was President of USAW and Executive Board member of the IWF in the 1990s, is "in awe" of the numbers.

Schmitz estimates that as many as 20 million Americans now lift weights at gyms, at home and in a range of sports.

Andrews said that figure "might possibly be a bit high but not outrageously so".

Schmitz has a valuable perspective of what happened to the US, and why they had such a bleak period in the sport in the 80s, 90s and noughties.

The era of anabolic steroids started in the 1950s. Bob Hoffman, founder of the York Barbell Company and a legendary figure in the sport, and USA team doctor John Ziegler talked with the Russians at the 1954 World Championships in Vienna, and Ziegler soon teamed with chemists in the US to produce what is now known as Dianabol.

There was no such thing as doping control at the time, and as the United States, Russia and Bulgaria strove to dominate the sport throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s - and beyond - steroid use was the norm, despite the first doping laws in 1967 and the start of testing in 1972.

"They were more than willing to share their plans with us – the Soviets, Bulgaria, Poland would show up at competitions with bottles of steroids to sell to us for US dollars," said Schmitz, who competed in the 60s and 70s.

"They had boxes and boxes of Dianabol – they hid it in cereal boxes. You could get the same stuff in the US on prescription but theirs was cheaper, and they wanted the dollars.

"Their athletes were recruited, developed, rewarded - and the rewards, regardless of the drugs, were the greatest motivator: money.

"I remember talking to Alexander Kurlovich from Belarus, who was twice Olympic champion in the over 105kg class, and I told him ‘If you had grown up in the United States you would be a rich and famous American football player.’

"His reply was, 'I am already rich and famous in my country as a weightlifter.’

"The point was, we would lose athletes that could be world champions to football and other professional sports.

"In the US we’ve been cleaned up since the 80s, so have plenty of others - but there are countries who don’t even attempt to lift clean.

"At the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 the Soviet Bloc boycotted, and the weightlifting was great – high quality, very competitive.

"There were no world records, the level went down a notch but it was probably the cleanest competition we’ve ever had.

"From then it’s been 99per cent clean here.

"From 1992 to 1996 I was on the IWF Executive Board, as President of USAW, and I got blackballed because of the steroid issue.

"The IWF thought I was a problem but at the same time the USOC said I was there to fight to get drugs out of the sport. I tried, but I was between a rock and a hard place. 

"The sport would have been so much better without steroids, without that ‘dirty era’.

"It’s so much better now, to be able to coach when it’s a clean sport.

"You have to be a certified coach now - that wasn’t the case before.

"The youth programme in the US is doing well because it’s a real clean sport.

"Here in Northern California there were six competitions 20 years ago, now there are 20.

"It’s finally caught on after all these years, weightlifting is a truly popular sport.

"It’s just great - I am in awe of the numbers, and Phil Andrews and his team deserve so much credit."

Schmitz’s point about the ‘rich man from Belarus’, the contrast between weightlifting cultures in the USA and the Russian-speaking  world, has been made in other ways.

There was no welcome ceremony for Norbert Schemansky after he returned from the 1952 Olympic Games with a gold medal. He took a bus home, alone, to Dearborn, Michigan after winning the 90kg in Helsinki.

In an interview in 2002 Schemansky, who died last year after a lifetime of struggle and menial jobs, told the Detroit Free Press of his attempt to get time off for the Olympics.

"I was working at Briggs Manufacturing, and I asked for time off, and one of the guys from downstairs said: ‘Give him all the time off he wants. Fire him.’”

Compare that to Yuri Vlasov, who won the Olympic super-heavyweight gold medal in Rome in 1960, where Schemansky was third.

Vlasov, who rated Schemansky "the greatest and strongest athlete I have ever seen” was awarded the Order of Lenin after winning in Rome, and later the Order of the Badge of Honour.

He was a favourite of Nikita Kruschev and Leonid Brezhnev, was part of the Soviet Union’s international delegations to Cuba and France, and became a prominent writer. He is a national hero.

In 1988 Rudy Sablo, a former Board member of USAW who was comparing the rise of the Soviet Bloc to the decline of the United States, said, "We were the best in the world until 1952 [the year when the Soviets first competed at the Olympics].

"We can’t pick our athletes at six to eight years old. In those Eastern Bloc countries it’s an advantage to train - in the United States it’s a sacrifice."

It has taken a while, but Sablo is now wrong: the youngest registered competitor on USAW’s books is eight-years-old.

And in contrast to Schemansky, elite athletes can earn up to $5,000 (£3,750/€4,000) a month in stipends, plus bonuses and whatever sponsorships they can find.

If they win medals in Anaheim, there are bonuses of  $5,000 for gold, $4,000 (£3,000/€3,350) for silver and $3,500 (£2,600/€3,000) for bronze - and the rewards for Olympic selection and medals are far higher.

Payments to elite athletes are very high on the list of priorities for Papandrea.

Asked what she would like to see at the end of the eight-year plan, the answer was, "A tiered sport with, at the top level, athletes who can make a good living as pro weightlifters through the sport and sponsorships - and of course I’d like to see them winning Olympic medals."

Papandrea, who teaches in Austin in Texas, also hopes to see professional coaches, paid by athletes and clubs, and a system of tournaments in place "at which the professionals can add to their earnings and work on popularising the sport".

Media coverage as part of the norm is another target, as is a youth programme at clubs and schools, a feeder system up towards the elite, and more retention of athletes when they graduate from youth to junior and junior to senior.

She would also like to go back to the 1950s.

"We’d like to see weightlifting as a big part of general fitness, which we are seeing now but I’d like to see it on a broader scale, like the 50s when fitness incorporated the snatch and the clean and jerk as part of its normal movement.

"We want growth in the general population, in the amateur ranks, so weightlifting becomes a lifetime sport.

"If we can grow media coverage we can bring in sponsors that will support the athletes.

"We need some superstars, American superstars. I’d love to see a fan base for our own athletes instead of our fans being fans of athletes from other countries.

"Everybody’s a patriot except when it comes to weightlifting," she laughed.

Even USAW, judging by their recruitment of the Brazilian Meloni and "star signing" Pyrros Dimas, who started his multi-faceted role as technical director early this year.

Dimas, one of the sport’s greatest heroes and one of only four men to have won three straight Olympic golds, moved with his family from Greece and is set for a long stay.

"The whole idea about Pyrros came about in 2015 at the World Championships in Houston," said Papandrea.

"I was having breakfast with my best friend Robin Byrd - the last American world champion in 1994 - and a USOC member and we talked about what was missing for USA Weightlifting, asked ourselves what could we do internally to change the perspective of our lifters.

"We asked Pyrros to join us and it has made a huge difference.

"When you have someone like Pyrros Dimas walking around in front of you every day, those dreams of being not just an Olympian, but being an Olympic champion multiple times, become a reality, because here’s someone who did it, just mingling amongst you as if he is one of you.

"You start to relate to this person as if this is the norm - he’s an inspiration, making what seems impossible real to people.

"Bringing him in from my perspective had as much to do with that as with the pragmatic effect he can have, drawing and attracting people to the sport.

"We weren’t sure how he was going to fit in, how we were going to use all of his knowledge and experience.

"In terms of marketing and his ability to inspire, there was clearly great potential there, but it turns out that he has amazing ability in the area of recruitment, and pairing him with [assistant technical director] Mike Gattone, the plan they developed together, has worked wonderfully well."

Dimas also works on performance strategy, athlete payments, talent ID, youth development and other areas, all of which feed into Andrews’ eight-year plan.

Earlier this month Dimas led America's young lifters to a record 30-medal haul at the Pan American Youth Championships in Colombia, a performance that offers plenty of hope for the future.

Other nations look at the US with respect but also with envy, thinking mistakenly that they receive hefty funding from the USOC.

Papandrea recalls sitting in a PanAmerican Weightlifting Federation meeting a few months ago "listening to several members complain about lack of funding from their government and the IWF", and thinking it was different for the Americans.

"Everybody thinks that I get a pay cheque, and that USAW is government funded. I said ‘No, no, no, no.’

"These World Championships will cost me over $5,000 of my own money, and as an adjunct college professor and part-time weightlifting coach that’s a lot of money.

"USAW can’t pay for me to be a coach as I am on the Board. I have been doing this for decades and it has always been expensive to stay in the sport.

"Not so long ago we were down to $220,000 (£165,000/€184,000) in our foundation, we were in dire circumstances, nearly broke, and USOC was pulling all the funding we might have got. It was really bad. There was a lot of stress and pressure to keep the sport alive.

"Because we had good leaders, Artie Dreschler and Regis Becker, financial people, we were able to pull ourselves out of it with their leadership.

"Then it was ‘what are we going to invest it in’. We made good hires, we now have a ‘super crew’.

"These other nations were saying we don’t get money from our Government, they were kind of whining, and I proffered some advice: why don’t you start doing some things to start earning income?

"They look at me as if to say ‘we don’t have your circumstance’ but I say yes you do, we didn’t have this circumstance either, we had to generate ideas, generate money to create this circumstance.

"It’s not just about having money, it’s about investing it properly, getting the right people, making the right plans, investing in youth programmes, in crossover programmes from other sports, building the events – it has to be multi-faceted.

"You have to have not just good staff but good policies."

Even during their long period of underachievement, when they were unable to keep up with rivals who were doping, the Americans made a huge contribution to weightlifting.

No nation played a bigger part in the acceptance of women into the sport.

The IWF approved women’s weightlifting in 1983, six years after the Americans had done so at national level.

The first women’s World Championships was in 1987, in Florida, and there was an American winner, Tara Nott, when women’s events finally made it on to the Olympic Games programme in 2000. 

Murray Levin, another former USAW pPresident, arguably played a bigger part than anybody in women’s weightlifting becoming a mainstream sport.

He was on the IWF Executive bBoard and headed Pan American Weightlifting for many years.

Levin pushed hard for women’s inclusion, he got support from Tamás  Ajan, who was then general secretary and is now President of the IWF, and Levin organised those first women’s World Championships in Daytona Beach.

Levin can relate to Papandrea’s comments about being out of pocket, as he estimates that his time as a senior administrator at national and continental level "cost me half a million dollars, over time".

He said, "I was involved in this sport in the 40s, the 50s, when it was people training in their garages.

"When I left 60 years later I was burned out. I’m forgotten, but I used to say that if I did nothing else for the sport but helping the women in, it would have been worthwhile.

"That World Championships in 1987 was the landmark, if that had failed it would have taken years more before women were recognised.

"But it was a great success, and it was like a breath of fresh air – the women changed everything, and that has been the single biggest change in weightlifting in the last 30 to 40 years."

Weightlifting is in the most important period of its history right now, striving to preserve its Olympic status and to eradicate the doping culture that has caused so much trouble.

What it might look like in another 30 to 40 years is anybody’s guess, but one thing looks more than likely: whatever happens, the US will once more be key players, on the platform and off it.