Snatch Lifting By the King of Jerk
On the new History in Color cover, Vasily Alexeev is performing a snatch lift in the 1970s.
Vasily Alexeev was the king of the clean-and-jerk lifts. His competition best jerk of 256kg was set over 40 years ago and still is impressive. Needless to say, nobody really knew how much Vasily could have cj’d in his prime. He trained alone and added 0.5kg to the world records without really pushing it to his own limits.
In his career, Alexeev set 80 world records. 32 of them were in the clean-and-jerk, 17 in the press lift, 27 in total and 4 in the snatch.
Here is complete list of snatch world records set by Vasily Alexeev:
- 177kg (Shakhty, 12/4/1970)
- 177.5 (Paris, 2/14/1971)
- 180kg (Moscow, 7/24/1971)
- 187.5 (Verona, 6/6/1974)
It is my understanding that the Soviets would give monetary rewards for a world record back when Alexeev was competing. It makes sense for him to just raise his records .5 kilos at a time since that way he could maximize his earnings as demonstrated by his incredible 80 world records.That was a lot of money, at least for a Russian athlete. When compared to today’s heavyweights, his snatch looks deficient but his Clean & Jerk still hold splendidly since many World and Olympic championships are still won with lifts like Alexeev made 40 years ago. His downfall started in 1978 when his hip was injured and never fully recovered (he was 36 or 37 by then and injuries came easier). He was a very impressive athlete at his peak (I saw him lift in 1972 in Munich) but came into the international limelight rather late at age 28 and winning his first Olympics at age 30, unlike most lifters today that become champions while still in their teens but they also burn out faster. If alive today (2018) he was have been about 75 years old. His total dominance ( no one could rival him) was 8 years, impressive for a super heavyweight.