Velichko Cholakov (1982-2017)
Sad news from Smolyan, Bulgaria… On August 20, 2017, Olympic weightlifter Velichko Cholakov had a heart attack and died at the age of 35, in the hospital in his hometown of Smolyan, Bulgaria. Cholakov...
Tagged: Lift Up
Bohuslav Braum, Czechoslovakia
Continuing our World Wide Rigert-O-Mania, we introduce the photo of super heavyweight Bohuslav Braum of Czech Republic. Bohuslav Braum (born in 1956) represented Czechoslovakia in 1979-1984. He won the bronze world and Eueopean medal...
Arnold Luhaaar: Berlin, 1936
On the photo, Arnold Luhaasr competes for Estonia at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Arnold Luhaaar (1905-1965) was one of the strongest Olympic weightlifters of the 1920s and 1930s. He competed at the...
Ivanchenko at the 1972 National Championship
The cover photo of the History in Color series features Soviet light heavyweight Gennady Ivanchenko at the 1972 Championship of the USSR. Ivanchenko was one of the strongest athletes in this class in the...
World Wide Weightlifting: Rigert-o-Mania
“I loved to add some showbiz stuff to the weightlifting,” said recently legendary David Rigert about his days on the competitive platform. For a starter, David Rigert is an Olympic champion, 6x World Champion,...
Just a Matter Of Technique
The History in Color cover photo depicts Yurik Vardanyan competing at the tournament of World Record Makers in Las Vegas in August 1978. Style wise, it is a very rare case when Yurik did...
Alfred Neuland (Estonia)
Olympic champion Alfred Neuland (1895-1966) of Valga, Estonia was definitely one of the landmark athletes in the history of modern Olympic weighting. Neuland was a pioneer of the snatcn/clean squat style technique and was...
Helmut Losch
Helmut Losch (1947-2005) of Stralsund, Germany was the first Olympic Weightlifter from East Germany to earn the title of World Champion. He won gold medal in the clean-and-jerk competition at the 1971 World Champiomship...
Big Names. Small Talk.
Just a casual conversation between world famous weightlifting personalities in the late 1970s. Left to Right: Leonid Zhabotinsky (2x Olympic champion), David Rigert (Olympic champion), Sultan Rakhmanov (Olympic champion) and Igor Kudyukov (Head coach, 1975-1980) of...
If Not Today Then Tomorrow
“If not today, then tomorrow you will be able to lift it up…” Those were the words of my coach. I was a young and emotional lifter. I was a fighter on the competition...
