Athletes and Coaches: Yurik Sarkisyan and Felix Aliev
The History in Color series features an athlete-and-coaches photo of legendary weightlifter Yurik Sarkisyan (USSR/Armenia/Australia) and his coach Felix Aliev.
Yurik Sarkisyan (b. 1961) had a long and distinguished career in Olympic weightlifting.
At 18, he won a silver medal for Team CCCP in the bantamweight at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. At 35, he took the 7th place for Australia in the bantamweight at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta!
At the USSR Championships, Yurik Sarkisyan won 3 gold (1983, 1984, 1987) and 2 silver (1982, 1986) medals. He also won the 1983 Spartakiade and 2 USSR Cups (1979, 1980).
While competing for the Soviet national team at the World Championships, Yurik won 2 gold (1982, 1983), 4 silver (1980, 1985, 1987, 1991) and 1 bronze (1981) medals. At the European championships, Yurik won 2 gold (1982, 1983) and 6 silver (1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1991) medals.
For Team Armenia, Yurik won a bronze World medal in the featherweight in 1993
For Team Australia, he won a gold (2002) and a silver (1998) medals at the Commonwealth Games.
Sarkisyan set 12 world records in his career – 1 in snatch, 7 in cj and 4 in total.