Beijing: An emotional Matthias Steiner of Germany won the men's +105kg weightlifting gold medal at the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday, 13 months after the tragic death of his wife.
Austria-born Steiner lifted 203kg in the snatch and a last-gasp 258kg in the clean and jerk for a total effort of 461kg, edging out Russia's Evgeny Chigishev by one kilogram. World champion Viktors Scerbatihs of Latvia won the bronze medal with 448kg.
It was Germany's first gold medal at the weightlifting competition, which ended Tuesday with hosts China running away with eight of the 15 golds at stake.
The German, who turns 26 on Monday, had come to these Games on a mission to win the title for his wife Susann, who died in a car accident in July 2007.
He roared in delight and shed happy tears as he heaved his coach while celebrating on the stage.
Steiner was born in Austria and represented his country of birth at the Athens Olympics four years ago, placing seventh in the lower 105kg category, but had a falling out with Austria's weightlifting federation afterwards.
He applied for German citizenship in 2005 and got married, but his career went into deep freeze as he could not compete without a passport.
This he finally obtained last January, when he went to his wife's grave to tell her the good news, saying at the time: "She should be the first to know."
He then bulked up to compete in the super-heavyweight class. The German team said he used the personal tragedy to motivate himself to win the gold medal.
Things appeared to have gone badly however after he missed his last snatch attempt, putting him in interim fourth place, seven kilograms less than the eventual silver medallist Chigishev who had hoisted 210kg.
It seemed to get worse as the German again failed to convert his first clean and jerk effort of 246kg.
Chigishev piled on the pressure with a final clean and jerk lift of 250kg, which meant the German had to lift 10kg more than his only converted clean and jerk effort of 248kg.
But in the end he delivered.
His winning total of 461kg, the weight of a good-siezed adult cow, was 11kg short of the world record set in the Sydney 2000 Olympics by Hossein Rezazadeh, who therefore on paper remains the strongest man on the planet.
The Iranian was missing here having been ordered by doctors to stay home to recover from a leg injury suffered in a car crash.
Comments
0 comment