Born in the Moharam Bek quarter of Alexandria, Anwar Mousbah was an Egyptian national weightlifting champion in the 1930s who competed out of Al-Olymbi, and later the Shbab Alexandria club. His success earned him a trip to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he won a gold medal in the lightweight division of the weightlifting tournament by lifting an Olympic record 342.5 kg. He shared this honor with Austrian Robert Fein, who had the same total lift, as the rule of awarding the medal to the lighter competitor was not instituted until the 1948 London Olympics. Egyptian radio, however, forgot to announce his name as a medal winner in Berlin and he was forced to carry around his prize for many years to prove to others, even his family, that he had been victorious at the Games.
Mousbah may also have been a medalist at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, had Egypt not boycotted them, as he won that year’s national championships with a total lift of 315.5, which would have been good enough for silver at that year’s tournament. A physical education teacher by trade, he retired from the sport in 1945 and settled into a career as a coach and athletics expert. He soon became a prominent figure in his country and, when rumors of his death were mistakenly broadcast as fact, the people of the city came to his residence, a modest apartment, in high numbers to offer their condolences in person.
Egypt