Featherweight (≤62 kg), Men

The reigning Olympic champion, and two-time World champion Kim Un-Guk of Korea, did not get a chance to defend his 2012 gold medal, after testing positive for a banned substance and being disqualified from the 2015 World Championships. But the field had an impressive line up without Kim, with several accomplished lifters vying for gold, including China’s two-time World champion Chen Lijun, Colombia’s 2012 Olympic silver medalist Óscar Figueroa and Indonesian’s double Olympic bronze. and four-time World medalist Eko Irawan.

Lifting 142 kg in the snatch to take the lead in the competition, Figueroa sealed his victory by lifting 176 kg in the clean & jerk (318 kg total), which he followed with three unsuccessful attempts at a world-record weight of 179 kg. In an Olympic career that started with a 5th place in 2004, a DNF in 2008, a silver medal in 2012, and then after failing in his last lift with his gold medal already secured in Rio, Figueroa took off his shoes and placed them on the platform, signaling his immediate retirement from the sport. He had become his country’s first-ever Olympic men’s weightlifting champion, and only the second Colombian gold medalist since María Isabel Urrutia lifted her way to the heavyweight gold in 2000.

Irawan captured the silver with a combined total of 312 kg, with the Chinese-born Kazakh Farkhad Kharki, back after a two-year doping suspension, claiming the bronze medal, at 305 kg.