Edit: This is another post by my friend, Brent. Enjoy.
–Justin
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2005, Doha, Qatar. It is the world weightlifting championships. The snatch session of the 105k+ men’s category is coming to an end. Of the 9 lifters competing in the A session, four of them have attempts left to obtain a result equal to or greater than 200k: Rezazadeh, the favorite, Viktor Scerbatihs, reliable as ever, Jaber Saeed Salem, an insanely strong athlete representing Qatar, and then there was Evgeny Chigishev.

Rezazadeh is just coming off a series of untouchable performances. At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, he clean and jerked the current world record, 263.5k, and totaled 17.5k more than the next competitor (Scerbatihs) with 472.5k (this is just 2.5k off from the greatest total of all time, set by Leonid Taranenko in 1998 at 475k). And in the 2005 Asian Championships, he totaled an effortless 460k, taking 10k jumps in all three of his clean and jerks, culminating in what appeared to be a fairly routine 260k.

Rezazadeh’s biggest problem is that it seems as if no one can challenge him.

Chigishev opens at 200k on his first attempt without trouble. Rezazadeh follows with an effortless 201k, which is greeted by great applause from the Iranians in the audience. Salem, who defeated Rezazadeh in 2003 in the snatch, also takes 201k, as does Scerbatihs in seemingly robotic fashion shortly after. Salem ups the ante with his third and final attempt at 205k, but is unable to rack the weight overhead to stand. Rezazadeh takes the lead again when he is successful at 205k, and with the pressure mounting, Scerbatihs fails on his third and final attempt to match Rezazadeh’s lift.

Chigishev has two attempts left.

He calls for 209k, a 9k jump from his previous effort. It is a considerable jump, but the Iranians in the crowd do not give him quiet. They whistle and they chatter, but Chigishev finds the focus to tune them out and explode the weight overhead. He is successful, and suddenly Rezazadeh is challenged.

Rezazadeh’s third attempt is 210k. He can’t call for 209k, since he outweighs Chigishev by 40 kilos, and it would also be unwise to take a larger jump to establish a greater lead, since this is his third attempt snatch. He has to make this lift, and he has to hope that Chigishev does not have it in him to succeed with a greater weight.

Rezazadeh’s final lift is, characteristically, effortless, and his performance is again awarded with loud applause. He’s wrested victory away from the hands of a Russian who looks like he should be posing on a bodybuilding stage.

But Chigishev has one attempt left, and he wants to send a message. He calls for 211k. If he beats Rezazadeh, he does not want to beat him by ruling on bodyweight. Chigishev wants to beat Rezazadeh, decisively and definitively.

Of course, Rezazadeh’s biggest fans are in the crowd. When Chigishev comes out for his final attempt, which will decide who takes gold in the snatch, the audience refuses to give him quiet again, even when he motions for it.

David Rigert, coach of the Russian National team, shouts at him to just fucking go, and Chigishev positions himself over the bar. With the crowd whistling and shouting, he’ll have to find his own quiet.

The problem with going up against people like Rezazadeh is that the illusion of his invincibility is as daunting as his actual ability to perform. If a man appears to be untouchable, people who try to best him are almost always going to be affected because of that illusion. Who can beat a man who is on the edge of becoming the strongest athlete the sport has ever seen?

The venue is packed. They are all there for Rezazadeh. But Chigishev stands alone over 211k.

His pull is violent, explosive. The bar is overhead, Chigishev locks it out, holds it there as it tries to wrench to his left. His knees are shaking at the bottom of the squat, but impossibly, he begins to rise, and methodically works himself to the top.

Rezazadeh is no longer in the lead.

And Chigishev, a modest superheavy at 125.77k, becomes a giant killer.

This is a post by my friend, Brent. One of his hobbies is to get on YouTube and watch videos of Olympic weightlifting, and he has done so for years (along with eating alone at restaurants, loving techno music, and getting chastised at work for having sweet hair). He has a pretty good knowledge of current weightlifters, and I’ve invited him to weigh in on well known lifters throughout the world.
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Matthias Steiner started competing as an Olympic weightlifter in 1995 for Austria. He was a relatively 70s big athlete from the outset, and rapidly grew into a competitive 105k lifter, and would eventually produce a 405k total at the 2004 Olympics, which ranked him 7th in what was a fairly tight competition. During his career with the Austrian Weightlifting Federation he competed in both the 105k and 105k+ categories.

By 2005, Steiner was unable to keep his bodyweight under the 105k limit and permanently moved to the superheavy category. It was also around this time that he and the Austrian Weightlifting Federation had a falling out, and he applied for citizenship in Germany. He wouldn’t compete for three years while his change in citizenship was pending.

Steiner reappeared on the international scene in 2008, making a strong statement when he won the Beijing Pre-Olympic Tournament with a 423k total. People were already speaking of the promise he held when he made another fantastic improvement in his showing at the 2008 European Championships. He was the only 105k+ lifter to snatch 200k, and made a lifetime PR clean and jerk at 246k in a solid 6 for 6 performance. Only Viktor Scerbatihs bested him by a kilo in total.

It was clear that Steiner would be the dark horse in the 2008 Olympic Games. He would face tough competition against Scerbatihs and the Russian colossus Evegny Chigishev. Steiner missed a crucial third attempt snatch and finished with 203k going into the clean and jerk, trailing behind Scerbatihs and Chigisehv in fourth place. Scerbatihs missed his second clean and jerk at 244k, but Steiner missed his first attempt clean and jerk at 246k before coming back on his second to take 248. Chigishev was successful at 240, 247, and 250k, which, along with his 210k snatch, gave him 460 for the lead.

Scerbatihs and Steiner would determine the medal rankings with their last attempts on the clean and jerk. To take first place, they would both need to take unreasonably large jumps in their attempts, but this was the fucking Olympics. Nobody was playing games, they had all quit school because of recess.

Scerbatihs would make a valiant attempt at 257, but was not able to pull through.

Steiner knew what he needed to do; he needed 461 to win, and he called for 258k on the bar. This would be a 10k increase from his second attempt, and a huge lifetime PR. The clean pinned him for a moment, but he powered out of the hole and set himself for the jerk. As he stuck the shit out of the jerk, the auditorium, which had held their silence during his effort, exploded with cheers and applause for he had produced one of the biggest upsets in weightlifting history.