Whether you’re a fan of weightlifting (the sport), or you just like lifting weights (the hobby), you’ve probably seen Italian weightlifters on your Explore feed once or twice. Over the past few years, Team Italy’s strongest men and women have captured the hearts and minds of millions online. But at the 2024 Olympics, Europe’s most...
The disciples who pray at the altar of Lasha Talakhadze speak of the 500-kilogram Total as though it might as well be the Rapture; the crowning and borderline-otherwordly achievement of the closest thing weightlifting has to a living deity. The premise behind the big 500 is simple enough that both diehard fans and starry-eyed newcomers...
If you’re only a casual fan of weightlifting — or the 2024 Olympics was your first exposure to the sport — you probably have no idea what happened to Loredana Toma in Paris. But those who know, know. Romanian Toma, who is among the world’s most popular women’s weightlifters, “bombed out” during the Women’s 71KG...
On the first day of weightlifting at the 2024 Olympics, I watched Mihaela-Valentina Cambei do something unheard of. Cambei, a 21-year-old Olympic lifter from Romania, put Team China, the world’s most dominant contingent, up against the ropes. World record holder and 2020 Olympic Champion Hou Zhihui would ultimately win her second Olympic title (whilst inking...
For the last year or so, Indonesian weightlifter Rahmat Erwin Abdullah has lifted world-record weights like the bar and plates were made of styrofoam rather than steel. The 23-year-old dark-horsed a bronze medal for Indonesia at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Since then, Abdullah has made the 73- and 81-kilogram divisions of weightlifting his personal...
By the numbers, weightlifting is thriving: The 2023 World Weightlifting Championships hosted more competitors than in any year prior. A few weeks after that, Bulgarian prodigy Karlos Nasar set social media ablaze with his 223-kilogram clean & jerk world record at the IWF Grand Prix II. An Instagram post documenting the lift has since racked...
