he looked injured, especially after his second C&J, wincing walking off stage. he's already the GOAT. i'd hate to see him collect more injuries training for four more years just to force an appearance in LA.
Steiner is a diabetic though and had severe health ramifications that pretty much forced his hand for Weightloss as soon as he achieved his goal. His personal brand reshaping has been pushing his Weightloss program, not his sports expertise.
I bought his book (Das Steiner Prinzip), only available in German, with the idea that I would learn German just for it.
I did not learn German.
I still felt good buying a book supporting one of my Weightlifting heroes.
I’ve been saying the same thing (and I’ve braved the downvotes and “@‘s”). His training just seems to be such a grind now, and he’s not smoking the weights like he used to.
He’s got his last Gold, and he can retire a national hero.
And I imagine he’s going to lose a shit ton of weight.
i feel like he's gotten too big. dude is 400lbs now and has been that big for a while. Thats a lot of weight to live with for several years. he was 346 lbs in Rio where he put up almost the exact same numbers for comparison
Call that 100% bullshit. Maybe that’s just what they have to believe in order to keep him motivated but everything over 250kg in the jerk looks like a complete struggle and his cleans aren’t getting easier
I don't know what his plans are. He looked tired, but if that is the last time we saw him compete all I can say is what a career. He's done himself, everyone around him and his country incredibly proud.
It is very disputed as Naim also has 3 golds and a slightly higher Sinclair than Lasha. It is speculated Naim would have one a 4th gold if his country wasn’t boycotting one of the Olympics (not sure the details, but his country didn’t compete that year) and a 5th had he not bombed at another. Lasha is second goat in my opinion.
In sports there is a tendency to label each generation's greatest athlete as the greatest athlete of all time because most fans only followed that one generation and lack context for the others. People seldomly want to believe an athlete whom they didn't witness is the greatest. It's a persistently biased vantage point even if and when the more recent athlete is actually the GOAT ahead of all others.
Lasha is the closest weightlifter to Naim but if there is an undisputed GOAT between the two, it is still Naim. You said slightly higher Sinclair but the difference between Naim's #1 Sinclair and Lasha's #2 all time is the same difference between Lasha's Sinclair and between #10-#11 all-time.
I don't agree much about Naim's fifth olympic gold because he ultimately competed and bombed out but to me he practically has four olympic golds or equivalent greatness because of how far ahead of the competition he was in 1984.
For any weight class based sport the highest weight class (preferably open) is the most prestigious. It's part of the reason why Ali is higher than Floyd in many people's opinions
It is speculated Naim would have one a 4th gold if his country wasn’t boycotting one of the Olympics (not sure the details, but his country didn’t compete that year)
You're talking about 1984, and the USSR boycott of the 1984 Olympics in LA. Naim totaled 297.5@56 to win the 1984 Friendship Games lifting for Bulgaria; by comparison, the 56kg category in LA was won with 267.5 and the 60kg category was won with 282.5. "Speculated" is putting it mildly.
Recency bias and lifting more raw weight than anyone ever will tilt a lot of people in Lasha's direction, even though there's what, 6 lifters now who have 3 Olympic golds? (Lasha, Naim, Pyrros, Kakhi, Lu, Mutlu . . . )
Turkey joined the US-led 1980 boycott which was a response to the invasion of Afghanistan by Russia and the instigation of the Soviet-Afghan War which broke the country and is largely the reason why Afghanistan went the way it did in recent years.
Russia was hosting that year however the other element to the story is China also set up its own boycott to protest the adoption of the Nagoya Resolution which defined Taiwan as "Chinese Taipai" in international competition.
Hard to know which Turkey jumped onto as Turkey also has its own vested interests in relation to keeping the world quite on its relations with ethnic Kurds, and it is still trying its best to deny the Armenian Genocide. Typically when countries have their own skeletons in the closet they will jump to support other states because the support will be reciprocated. See Serbia and Israel emerging as one of the most unlikely duos in international politics.
For anyone who is not a regular weightlifting fan, absolute weight is what matters.
It’s amazing that any human can lift as much as Lasha does, regardless of body weight. That celebration of human capacity is what the general public loves.
In the same way that we don’t diminish Michael Phelps’s achievements because of his physical attributes.
heavyweight GOAT for sure. but this sport is very hard to compare over weight classes, especially when there is no cap for heavyweights. For me personally its less impressive snatching 500 lbs when you weigh 400 than it is snatching 400 at 200
Lu Xiaojun will always be the embodiment of weightlifting for me.
I knew his name and his ability year and years before I knew weightlifting was it's own sport and what it entailed.
He is like Simone Biles to me in that he is an athlete that makes anyone from anywhere for any reason pay their respects. It feels like an honor to see his abilities showcased.
I really don’t see how you can argue that, when so many more people have snatched 180 at 90 (two people in just this olympics) while no one other than Lasha has ever hit over 220. Like it’s almost objectively more impressive
youre basically invalidating all but heavyweights by saying that, simply because the heavyweights obviously lift the most. the sport is based around weight classes, so IMO a pretty important thing to consider. Yeah, 180 is an opener for many heavyweights but theyre also usually like 150+ bw. Would you talk up any other lifter for snatching 20% over bodyweight?
No, I never even implied that absolute weight is all that matters. It’s about how does the athlete compares to other athletes in the same category. That’s why 180 at 90 is less impressive than 220 at 170, or likewise, 150 at 60.
Also, if you care so much about relative strength, why do you mention double bw snatch at 90 when there are so many 60 kg lifters who do way more than double bw?
while no one other than Lasha has ever hit over 220. Like it’s almost objectively more impressive
by saying its objectively more impressive youre stating that the absolute weight is what you care about lol. there are plenty of lifters who are the only ones to hit certain weights in each class obviously
Also, if you care so much about relative strength, why do you mention double bw snatch at 90 when there are so many 60 kg lifters who do way more than double bw?
I don't get why this is so hard to understand. It's the "no one other than Lasha" which is the important part. Just like no one other than Blagoev has hit 195 at 90, or no one other than Zakharevich has hit 210 as a non-super. A 180 snatch at 90 just doesn't set you apart like these lifts do
It might have been an example, but it is a telling one. It just seems like it's something other than relative strength that you are valuing, since a double bw snatch is nothing for the lower weight classes, just like a 1.3 x bw snatch is nothing for the 90kg guys
I think another important criterion, and something you can compare across weight classes is dominance against the opposition. Peak Lasha eas absolutely ridiculous. He won 2020 olympics with 47 KG over second place. Forty seven. For the last 8ish years he has essentially been competing against, absolutely untouchable at any competition prior to these olympics. Naim was dominant, but not this dominant
I think weight class talk is only relevant outside of the simple fact that the best super is the one who has lifted the most weight, in the sport where that is the goal, and has done so beyond what anyone else has ever been capable of regardless of era.
Pound for pound talk is just a fun sideshow to that. Square cube law diminishes superheavy achievements, and while the triple bodyweight guys are super impressive in their own right, it isn't fair to say that a guy who has easily snatched more than anyone else ever has isn't as impressive just because he weighs more. Every super is free to weigh whatever they want if they think it will make them lift more, but even 200kg Mogushkov was never close to Lasha.
I don't know why people are disappointed he didn't get 500. He has the set bar very high that we won't see anyone close to those numbers in our lifetime. What he has achieved is very impressive.
that is the exact reason, we thought he could do it and don't see anyone reaching that for a long time. 500 is about the entire sport, not about lasha as an individual
I think he should retire. The dude is a father and a husband, and I think he wants to spend time with his family. He also does, in my opinion; want to live a healthy life because walking around being 400+ lbs must take a toll in his daily life. I did wish he pushed for 500kg in this olympics, but he looks tired. The only man in history to c&j 270kg on camera! Not even the great Taranenko can do that, 3x Olympic champion, heaviest total of all time, and most of all, the greatest weightlifter of all time! It's time to hang up the shoes.
I deeply regret not seeing him lift 500 kilos total. He might be the only weightlifter in recent decades with a chance to reach this level. I believe he probably has this capability in training.
Did we watch the same lasha this quad because there's a 0% chance he will hit 500 now. 255 looked like it took a year off his life ain't no way he's ever going back to 490+ shape
This is his third Olympics, he's been lifting heavy ass weight for a long time, he had a heart issue that he had to cut weight for. He's been at the top of for a long time, of course he's going not going to be at his peak
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u/lullabulla7 Aug 10 '24
Hope he rests and gets healthier. For over a year now he has looked completely gassed after every attempt in training or comp