Unlimited, One Hand, Men

Although this event was for dumbbell lifting, the weight had to be lifted with each hand. Josef Steinbach achieved some measure of revenge by easily winning the dumbbell contest after his loss in the barbell event. He was probably the strongest man of his day. He was born on 21 March 1879 at Horschau, near Pilsen, Bohemia. When he was 15, he moved to Vienna, where he began his weightlifting career in 1898. He quickly became the greatest Austrian lifter and, in 1900, was judged the champion of the association of Austrian athletic clubs. In 1902, he won the Austro-Hungarian championship, and, in 1904, he won the World weightlifting championship for the first time. In 1905, he was World champion twice, as two competitions were held that year, one in Berlin, and another in Duisburg, Germany.

After the Olympic Games, Steinbach turned professional, mainly as a wrestler, although he continued to perform exhibition weightlifting as a professional. In 1910, he issued a challenge to the well known strong man Arthur Saxon to compete against him for the professional weightlifting championship of the world. The challenge was issued repeatedly and published in several popular physical culture magazines of the time but Saxon never responded to the challenge, obviously fearing Steinbach in such an event. Steinbach died in Vienna on 15 January 1937. Later that year, a huge granite monument was erected in his honor from a fund raised from Austrian and German weightlifters and wrestlers.