Serge Reding of Belgium Performs an Olympic Press in Leningrad

History in Color:
June 25, 1968, Leningrad, USSR –26-year old super heavyweight Serge Reding of Belgium completes a 182.5kg press lift in the 90kg+ class at the 1968 European Championships in Leningrad.

At the 1968 European Championships, Serge Reding won a silver medal with a 527.5kg (182.5+140+205) total. Four months afterwards, he won a silver Olympic medal with  555kg (195+147.5+212.5) in total.

Serge Reding (1941-1975) was one of the best and most memorable super heavyweights of the 1960s. He was a member of an exclusive Club 600 with the 620kg total of 3 lifts (220+175+225) set in Lille, France in April 1972. There were only 5 athletes in the world that had their membership in the Club 600. Besides Reding, those were Vasily Alexeev (USSR), Rudolf Mang (Germany), Ken Patera (USA) and Stanislav Batishchev (USSR).

Reding competed for his native Belgium at the Summer Olympics in 1964, 1968 and 1972. In 1968, he became a vice champion of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. He won silver medals at the World Championships in 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1974, won the European championship in 1969 and set 6 world records in his career.