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IWF120y/34 – 1984: The beginning of a solid Olympic presence for Chinese Taipei

Outside our sports community, it is hard to find someone capable of identifying the most successful sport in Chinese Taipei: the answer is weightlifting. Out of the 43 medals achieved by the island at the Olympics, 11 (leading the chart) were earned by lifters. It all started in 1984, when the Games were only available for men: in the 60kg, Tsai Wen-yee opened the way with a bronze – he remains the only male Olympic weightlifting medallist for Chinese Taipei. The subsequent 10 podium presences were all achieved by women, after female competitions were admitted in the Games, in 2000. On that successful debut in Sydney (AUS), Li Feng-ying and Kuo Yi-hang got respectively the silver in the 53kg and bronze in the 75kg category. From the 2008 Games onwards, and until last year’s edition in Paris, female weightlifters from Chinese Taipei have always medalled. In Beijing, Chen Wei-ling became the first-ever gold medallist in the 48kg category, while her teammate Lu Ying-chi earned silver in the 63kg. Chen Wen-huei closes the list of single medallists, with a bronze (64kg) at the Tokyo 2020ne Olympics. Two athletes deserve however a special mention, as they clinched at least two Olympic medals in the Sport: Hsu Shu-ching has two victories in the 53kg (London 2012 and Rio 2016) and Kuo Hsing-chun (photo) was three times on an Olympic podium: gold in Tokyo 2020ne (59kg), and two bronze (in Rio 2016 and Paris 2024). Kuo (or “Tana” as she is also known) is arguably the best weightlifter the island has produced: besides her Olympic achievements, she is also a five-time world champion and winner of six continental championships. At 31, she has established 11 World Records so far throughout her career.  

IWF120y/33 – 1972: Weightlifting pays a heavy price on Olympics’ saddest day

The 1972 Olympic Games in Munich (GER) had entered its second week and were consensually considered a huge sportive and organisational success. The weightlifting competition was also well advanced, but everything came to a shocking halt on September 5. At around 4h30 in the morning, eight Palestinian militants, from a group called “Black September”, infiltrated the Olympic Village and penetrated the building hosting the Israeli delegation taking part in the competition. The group kills two athletes at the beginning of the operation and retains nine others as hostages. After a long day of unfruitful negotiations, terrorists and hostages were taken to a German military airport, supposedly to be flown to Cairo, in Egypt, as per the group’s demand. A rescue ambush plan was however executed by the police, but it failed and all the hostages lost their lives during the operation. Out of the 11 Israeli victims, four were part of the weightlifting family (four others were from wrestling, and one apiece from shooting, fencing, and athletics). Three lifters – Zeev Friedman (28 years old), Yossef Romano (32), and David Berger (28) – and one referee (Yakov Springer, 52) tragically died in what remains the saddest day in Olympics’ history. On September 6, after a memorial for the victims – attended by 80’000 people gathered in the Olympic stadium for the football game Germany-Hungary – the Games resumed following an unprecedented suspension for 34

IWF120y/32 – 2024: Lima tests with success the two-platform format

With the steady improvement of the number of lifters taking part in the IWF events – thus testifying on the universal development of the sport in the five continents -, the number of sessions and days at the major competitions has been under consideration. The choice between having more (less charged) or fewer (with continuous sessions from morning to evening) days has in many cases reached its limits, so a new solution was tested at the 2024 IWF World Youth Championships, held in Lima (PER) from May 22-26: the simultaneous use of two platforms in the same venue. This scenario is not new for many national members (who are using it at their domestic events), but at the IWF level, this was a premiere. With one platform featuring male lifters and the other one welcoming female action, this format allowed a faster running of the event, attended by 277 athletes (137 men, 140 women). During the five-day competition, spectators on the site and those following the event remotely could enjoy a more “compacted” action, with fewer stops between the lifts running on both platforms. Athletes, officials, and organisers praised this innovative solution and the system will be used again in the Peruvian capital this year, for the joint organisation (also a premiere) of the IWF World Junior and Youth Championships, taking place from April 30 to May

IWF120y/31 – 1970: Vasily Alekseyev emerges to glory

Born in January 1942, it was not before being 18 that Vasily Alekseyev started to practice weightlifting. It was a wise decision, as he became the uncontestable star of the 1970s, in the super heavyweight category. The Soviet talent trained with a coach until 1968, but then decided to proceed alone and the results appeared very soon. In 1970, he establishes his first World Record (he would set 80 global marks during his career!) and wins the World Championship title in Columbus (Ohio, USA). It is the start of a golden decade that will include two Olympic titles, in Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976. As the Games were also counted as World Championships, he will therefore establish an extraordinary series of eight consecutive victories at the highest level – 1970 to 1977. In parallel, he is also eight times European champion from 1970 to 1978. He is still today, the most titled lifter in the history of the IWF World Championships. At the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, he overrated his capacity in Snatch and bombed out. He retired from competition immediately after those failed Games. Performance-wise, Alekseyev had no problems during the transition from the three to the two-movement competition (implemented in 1973), having established some landmarks throughout his career – he was the first man to lift more than 600kg in the three movements (press, snatch and clean & jerk), with a personal best and WR of 645kg (in 1972), and more than 400kg in the two-movement competition (445kg being his last WR); the Soviet champion was also the first athlete to successfully perform a C&J of 500 pounds (227kg), in 1970. After his retirement, he remained active as a coach (namely during the 1992 Games in Barcelona), and got involved in politics (he was elected in 1987 to the Soviet Union’s Congress of People’s Deputies). He passed away in 2011, after serious heart problems. One of his two sons, Dmitry, was also a national-level successful

IWF120y/30 – 2016: Do it first, no matter your body weight!

Despite the tiny minimal differences (initially 0.5kg, nowadays 1kg) when considering a weightlifting result (thus allowing for a potential range of different outcomes), it happens on many occasions that a tie is registered, meaning that two different athletes have lifted the exact same number of kilos. Traditionally, this problem was solved in the past with a very straightforward method: if tied, the lightest lifter (the one whose body weight was inferior) would win. This method was based on simple logic: for the same weight on the bar, the heaviest athlete has some advantage, so the lightest one should be favoured. In 2016, the IWF decided to change this rule and adopt a new procedure: from 2017 onwards, in case of a tie, the athlete who has first lifted or achieved a cumulative result wins (in reality, this rule already existed since the mid-1980s, but only as a second element to untie a result, if lifters with the same result had also the exact same body weight). The idea is to enforce the sacred principle in our Sport: who lifts more, triumphs! Additional arguments in favour of this idea include an improvement of ‘active’ strategies during the competition (and not the simple comparison of the body weights), the enforcement of the principle that athletes must win on the platform (and not in the sauna), and a better understanding of the rules by neophytes in weightlifting (spectators, TV viewers, or media representatives). In practical terms, this rule obliges the lifter to look for the next kilo in order to overcome his/her most direct opponent. It has one more non-negligible advantage: if a World Record is set, and then matched, the first lifter establishing it will necessarily and logically win the

IWF120y/29 – 1977: China starts its pathway to excellence

Until the mid-1970s, the sport of weightlifting was dominated by lifters coming from the Soviet Union – they are still ranked second in the Olympic and World Championships medallists’ charts – but another powerhouse started to emerge at the highest level: China. We are in Stuttgart (Germany) in 1977, at the World Championships, and Chen Manlin (men’s 56kg category) will stay in the history books as the first Chinese lifter with a medal at the IWF showcase – in this case, two, the silver in the Clean & Jerk and the bronze in Total. A discreet debut of what would become an incredible supremacy until the present day. Two years later, at the 1979 Worlds in Thessaloniki (GRE), Wu Shude (photo) is the first-ever world gold winner (Snatch), the men’s 52kg. Wu is arguably the initial star of Chinese weightlifting, as he would also clinch the title at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, this time in the 56kg. Before that success, his teammate Zeng Guoqiang officially becomes the first Chinese Olympic champion in the Sport, lifting 105-130-235 in the men’s 52kg. The Asian delegation leaves California with a total of four titles out of the 10 on offer. In 1987, the IWF showcase is also contested by women and the inaugural edition in Daytona Beach (USA) is dominated by China (eight out of the nine gold at stake). For the record, the first-ever Chinese female world champion was Cai Jun (44kg category) with 70-75-145. These achievements lead to the organisation in 1995 of the first IWF World Championships in Guangzhou, where the host nation leads the medals chart, with seven overall titles. From 1977 to 2024, China won 1048 medals at the IWF World Championships (including 347 in Total only). At the Olympics, the Asian powerhouse also leads operations with 67 podium presences (43 gold, 16 silver, and eight bronze) – medals at the Games only comprise Total