Super-Heavyweight (>105 kilograms), Men

With Russia out of the weightlifting competition at the 2016 Rio Games, one of the favourites for gold, the two-time World and European champion and 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Ruslan Albegov, was also out.

But this was a deeply talented category anyway, with the defending Olympic champion Behdad Salimi of Iran, the 2015 World champion Lasha Talakhadze (promoted to 1st place after Russia’s Aleksey Lovchev failed a doping test), Mart Seim of Estonia and Armenia’s Gor Minasyan, the 2015 World silver and bronze medalists respectively. The lead bounced around in the snatch with Salimi opening at 206 kg, then had a 211 kg snatch. Talakhadze then broke Salimi’s snatch world record when he lifted 215 kg, only to have Samili re-set it at 216 kg a minute later, and entered the clean & jerk narrowly in the lead by 1 kg, with Talakhadze right behind him. Salimi, the Olympic champion was desperately trying to defend his title, but could not complete any of his three attempts on the clean & jerk and bombed out. While he disagreed with the judge’s ruling on his first two attempts, he didn’t have the energy to complete the third.

Talakhadze, who had six good lifts on the day, had a clean & jerk lift of 258 kg, 11 kg more than his second, and it gave him the surprise Olympic title, against what could have been a distracting backdrop.

Security forces were called in after Iranian coaches reacted furiously to Talakhadze’s win over Salimi where he and the head coach of Iran’s team, Sajjad Anoushrivani, were yelling, screaming and angrily approaching the jury, claiming there was a conspiracy led by an Iraqi on the jury.

With Talakhadze’s 473 kg total, he surpassed the 472 kg world record mark of Iranian, Hossein Reza Zadeh, set 16 years ago at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Minasyan finished 22 kg behind Talakhadze and won Armenia’s third silver medal of the Games, after wrestler Migran Arutyunyan, and weightlifter Simon Martirosyan. Georgian Irakli Turmanidze, who was 5th at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, finished with a 448 kg total, for the bronze.