The 1st World Record by Yevgeny Minaev

History in Color:
August 20, 1956, Moscow, Russia – 23-year old featherweight of the Soviet Army team Evgeny Minaev sets up a new world record in the press lift at the 1st USSR Spartakiade and 1956 USSR Championships in Moscow.

It was his first world record. In his career in Olympic weightlifting, Yevgeny Minaev set 10 world records. 8 of those were in the press. Overall, he finished on the 4th place at the 1956 Spartakiade – behind the Olympic Champions Ivan Udodov (gold) of Rostov-on-Don and Rafael Chimishkyan (bronze) of Tbilisi and Ivan Tarelkin of Ivanovo (silver).

Yevgeny Minaev (1933-1993) began to lift weights when he served in the Army in Vinnitsa. Later on he was transferred to Klin and then competed for the Moscow Army Club. He was one of the strongest featherweights in the world in the late 1950s to mid 1960s. Minaev represented the Soviet Union at two Summer Olympics and won silver medal in Melbourne in 1956 and became an Olympic champion in Rome in 1960. Minaev was a 2x World champion (1957, 1962) and 3x European champion (1958, 1960, 1962).

Minaev won 7 titles at the USSR Championships (1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963. 1965, 1966) and 2 gold medals at the USSR Spartakiads (1959, 1963).

On the international arena, Minaev faced a very serious rival, fabulous U.S. featherweight Isaac Berger. They competed on so many occasions, that they were able to talk to each other without an interpreter for hours despite the fact that Berger didn’t speak Russian and Minaev – English.