21 Doping Cases of Young Turkish Weightlifters; Fallout Drags on 12 Years Later  

In 2022, Dr. Tamas Ajan and Olympic champion Nicolae “Nicu” Vlad were banned from weightlifting’s bureaucracy for life, one year after being charged with “tampering and collusion” in the now-famous McLaren report. Alongside them was Hasan Akkus, then-president of the Turkish Weightlifting Federation (TWF). In Jan. 2023, Akkus was banned from the sport’s governance for […]

2024 Pan American Weightlifting Championships Full Results

2024 is starting off with a bang for fans of weightlifting. February has hosted four different continental championships in a row as the Paris 2024 Olympic Games draw ever closer. This year, the Pan American Weightlifting Championships (PAWC) are being held in Caracas, Venezuela, from Feb. 23 to 29. This event will help decide the […]

Laura Horvath Takes 7th at 2024 European Weightlifting Championships

The 2024 European Weightlifting Championships have just concluded in Sofia, Bulgaria, and among the world’s strongest athletes in the competition was none other than 2023’s Fittest Woman on Earth, Laura Horvath. Just four months ago, Horvath won the 2023 Hungarian Weightlifting National Championship in the 76kg weight category with a total of 215 kilograms: 95-kilogram […]

IWF General Secretary Antonio Urso To Retire From Weightlifting

Antonio Urso, one of the leading campaigners against corruption in weightlifting over the past three decades, and overseer of Italy’s recent rise to prominence on the weightlifting platform, is leaving the sport. Urso announced his decision at the European Weightlifting Federation (EWF) Congress in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was held alongside the 2024 European Weightlifting Championships […]

Weightlifter Mart Seim “Had To” Squat 400 Kilograms To Compete Against Drug Users

Athletes will utilize whatever competitive advantage they can to excel in their sport. This is as true in badminton as it is in basketball and goes doubly for strength sports like weightlifting. That said, athletes don’t always do things by the book. in sports like Olympic lifting, the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) has created […]

Hampton Morris Sets 3 American Records at 2024 European Weightlifting Championships

Hampton Morris made a great start for Team USA at the 2024 European Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, an Olympic qualifying competition. Morris broke all three American national records in the 61-kilogram class — five kilograms more than his previous best total in qualifying for Paris 2024 — with the following lifts: 2024 European Championships Results […]

Why Can’t North Korea Compete in Weightlifting at the 2024 Olympic Games?

“This is the first time that all of our athletes have won gold,” says Song Nam Jang, head coach of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK or PRK) weightlifting team in an interview provided to BarBend. “We trained more and harder, and we made many world records.” Jang is referring to the DPRK’s performance […]