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| Event type

Heavyweight (≤105 kilograms), Men

Date15 August 2016 — 15:30 (B) (A)
StatusOlympic
LocationRiocentro Pavilhão 2, Parque Olímpico da Barra, Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro
Participants17 from 15 countries
FormatTotal of best lifts in snatch and clean & jerk determined placement. Ties broken by lightest bodyweight.

After finishing 4th at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Uzbekistan`s Ruslan Nurudinov was enroute to dominating the Olympic cycle prior to the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. He won the 2013 World Championships, and captured the silver in 2014, after briefly setting a world record in the clean & jerk (when Ilya Ilyin of Kazahkstan re-set it by three kilograms, and beat him on body weight). When Nurudinov missed the 2015 World Championships with a knee injury, the Kazahk Aleksandr Zaychikov took the World title. With their main rival Ilyin (the four-time World champion, and originally a double Olympic champion from 2008 and 2012), now banned and officially stripped of both his gold medals due to doping infractions, the competition was between Nurudinov and Zaychikov. Also a potential to get on the podium was Armenian Simon Martirosyan, who won the 2014 Youth Olympic Games (in the 85 kg class), and the 2016 World Junior Championships (in the light-superweight, 105+kg, class) with a 412 kg total.

In Rio, Nurudinov and fellow Uzbek lifter Ivan Yefremov were tied at 194 kg after the snatch, but Yefremov’s heaviest clean & jerk topped out at 220 kg for the day. Martirosyan had a chance to move ahead of Nurudinov but failed his last clean & jerk at 234 kg. Nurudinov, age 24, having already secured the gold medal with his second-last clean &jerk, elected to take his third lift to break the existing Olympic record of 236 kg, with a final 237 kg effort and finish with a total of 431 kg winning Uzbekistan’s first Olympic medal in the sport and sending the crowd into a frenzy. Still a teenager, Martirosyan, captured the silver medal to become Armenia’s first medal winner at the Rio Games, and dedicated his medal to the people of Armenia. Zaychikov only made his opening clean & jerk, but it was good enough for the bronze medal.

Kiribati’s David Katoatau, the 2014 Commonwealth Games champion, who finished 14th in Rio, entertained the crowd with dances after each lift, as part of his attempt to bring attention to the threat climate change poses to his homeland, and other low-lying Pacific islands, and was pleading for international support to preserve Kiribati.

PosGroupLifterNOCWeightBodyweightSnatchClean & Jerk
1Ruslan NurudinovUZB431104.96194 (2)237 (1)Gold
2Simon MartirosyanARM417104.63190 (5)227 (2)Silver
3Aleksandr ZaychikovKAZ416104.51193 (3)223 (4)Bronze
4Yang ZheCHN415104.59190 (4)225 (3)
5Ivan YefremovUZB414104.90194 (1)220 (8)
6Mohammad Reza BarariIRI406104.65186 (6)220 (7)
7Arkadiusz MichalskiPOL400104.77179 (11)221 (5)
8Artūrs PlēsnieksLAT399103.99181 (8)218 (9)
9Salwan Jasim Al-AifuriIRQ394103.80180 (9)214 (10)
10Jürgen SpießGER390104.51170 (14)220 (6)
11Sargis MartirosjanAUT389104.19179 (10)210 (11)
12Gaber MohamedEGY377104.98173 (12)204 (13)
13Hernán VieraPER351103.85151 (16)200 (14)
14David KatoatauKIR349104.58145 (17)204 (12)
DNFBartłomiej BonkPOL104.07185 (7)– (NVL)
DNFMateus GregórioBRA104.47170 (13)– (NVL)
DNFGiorgi ChkheidzeGEO104.74170 (15)– (NVL)