As of 2016, Abdul Wahid Aziz remains Iraq’s only Olympic medalist. He practiced numerous sports in his youth, but eventually settled on weightlifting and entered his first national tournament in 1951, where he placed second as a bantamweight, a feat that he repeated the following year. He made his international début at the 1953 Pan Arab Games, by then as a featherweight, and took home a silver medal. Four years later, as a middleweight, he won gold, the same year that he also won the Asian Championships and came in fourth at the Worlds. Slimming down to lightweight, he took bronze at the 1959 World Championships. This made him a contender at the 1960 Rome Olympics, where he repeated his success by coming in third.
Aziz’s last major international tournament came the following year at the World Championships, where he finished fourth. During the country’s 1963 Ramadan Revolution he was tortured by the new regime as a leftist, and he retired the next year, following the execution of his coach. He then served as an international referee, but was arrested against in 1980 and imprisoned by the regime of Sadaam Hussein for almost a year for his left-wing beliefs. These events took their toll on him, as he died the following year.
Iraq