Topic: News: Iran weightlifting legend RezaZadeh pulls out of Olympics!

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Link

Iran weightlifting legend RezaZadeh pulls out of Olympics

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran double Olympic gold medallist Hossein Rezazadeh on Wednesday pulled out of the 2008 Games because he was not in good enough shape to defend his title, a weightlifting official said.

"Mr. Rezazadeh had eight months of heavy training while having stomach problems," Iranian weightlifting federation public relations, Mahmoud Abdollahi told AFP.

"His age (30) also was part of the decision so he listened to the medical commission advice and said enough was enough.

"Another reason was that despite his training he did not achieve his desired record," Abdollahi said.

According to the Iranian official the younger Rashid Sharifi has been training as a backup for Rezazadeh - nicknamed 'the Iranian Hercules' -. Abdollahi did not give any information about Sharifi.

Weighing more than 161 kilos (355 pounds), Rezazadeh holds world records in snatch (213 kilos), clean jerk (263 kilos) and total (472 kilos).

Rezazadeh missed last year's world championships in Thailand after sustaining injuries in a car crash.

Rezazadeh is known for always as part of his lifting routine invoking the name of Abolfazl, the half-brother of Hussain, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson and third Imam of Shia Islam.

He also has the inscription of "Ya Abolfazl" printed across his vest in competition - something that has on occasion provoked the ire of sporting authorities keen to keep all slogans off kit.

Iranians had high hopes as their "Hercules" was on a mission to achieve weightlifting immortality by completing his labour of winning a third Olympic gold medal in Beijing.

Rezazadeh's breakthrough came in the 2000 Sydney Olympics when he equalled the heaviest lift in 80 years of Olympic weightlifting history, a massive 262.5kg, to take gold in a dramatic superheavyweight showdown.

He then followed this with gold at the 2004 Athens Games and became a major celebrity in Iran where his massive frame endorsed products from banks to mineral water.

But the road to Beijing as not been easy. Rezazadeh, was injured in a car crash in August 2007 when the car taking him to a training camp in northern Iran swerved into the mountainside in heavy fog.

He last competed at the Asian Games in Doha in December 2006.

"Weightlifting is a sport known for its records and in the past eight months I have been training well but not in a way to hurt my body," Rezazadeh told AFP during pre-Olympic training at Tehran's Azadi Stadium and before stunning his fellow Iranians.

"My effort is headed towards victory in the Olympics," he added.

Save for the Soviet-boycotted 1984 Games, he has been the only non ex-Soviet lifter to win an Olympic gold in the over-105kg category.

"Whatever God wishes, the more I train the more possibility there is of a new world record.

"You see even a small injury puts you back at least 10 days from regular training and consequently away from achieving any record," he said.

"With a gold medal I want to bring happiness to the heart of 70 million people, but one have to know that strength does not remain with one forever," he added.

Rezazadeh was born in the provincial capital city of Ardebil in western Iran, and encouraged into weightlifting by his gym teacher.

He impressed with his patriotism when after the 2004 Athens Olympics, he rejected Turkey and Greek's lucrative offers to switch nationality and win a gold medal for them in the games.

Rezazadeh's frequent appearances in endorsements have also caused controversy.

Iran in July banned sports and movie stars from appearing in commercial advertisements on the grounds that celebrities should not promote consumerism, in a move apparently aimed at the weightlifter and some film stars.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Link

Rezazadeh Calls an End to Weightlifting Career

The strongest man in the world, Hossein Rezazadeh, has ended his sports career for medical reasons, ISNA news agency has reported.

Doctors have prohibited the Iranian heavyweight-weightlifting champion from taking part in any sports activity, the report said without disclosing any of the medical reasons.

The report comes three weeks before the beginning of the Beijing Olympics, where Rezazadeh was expected to win his third Olympic gold medal.

In a letter to the Iranian Weightlifting Federation, Rezazadeh confirmed that he would not be taking part in any sport event.

The Iranian champion won several gold medals in various international sport events, including two gold medals at Sydney and Athens Olympics in 2000 and 2004.

[Alex Carter]

WOW this is sad and tragic news, to me he was one of the best weightlifters of all time, amazing powerful and strong man, hope he can find something else to do after a great weightlifting career, now the title is really up for grabs!!

[walt lampert]

I must admit , I am a bit surprised at this.  So now the constest is between Scerbathis, Chigichev, or Steiner I think.  Anything can happen now, way hard to call.   I will still give the edge to Victor because of his consistancy.  Would love to see Evgeny get it , but he is so light in bodyweight and it tells in his clean and jerk, he is the big snatcher of all three .  Steiner is on a roll though and I hope he hasn't peeked too early. Like em all.

Walt

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Link

Hercules is not a Greek myth
Iranian weightlifter and twice gold-medalist Rezazadeh hangs up the bar for good
By Dave Stubbs

I have spoken to Iran's Hossein Rezazadeh only once, in Athens four summers ago in a cramped, steamy dressing room deep in the Nikaia Olympic Weightlifting Hall. Our 15-second conversation consisted of one question and a cordial two-sentence reply.

I've seen him compete only twice, that night and four years earlier on an Olympic stage in Sydney. Both times his stunning gold-medal victories took my breath away.

And for that reason, I was eager to cover the charismatic Rezazadeh again next month in Beijing. But last week, he suddenly withdrew from the Olympics and retired from his sport. If I'm disappointed, the country that worships him is in a state of mourning.

Struggling the past year, Rezazadeh has chosen to follow doctors' advice that he no longer subject himself to "heavy and stressful activities," an occupational hazard when you're known as the world's strongest man. Physicians fear that, at 30, he is courting a potentially catastrophic rupture of blood vessels should he continue to strain beneath bowed, quarter-ton bars.

Rezazadeh has not competed in 19 months, and last August suffered a leg injury when a car in which he was riding veered off a fog-shrouded road into a mountainside in northern Iran. Now comes word his vascular system might fail him, hardly a surprise given his vocation of the past 15 years.

"For the past five months, physicians have asked me to put aside sports," he told the news agency ISNA, comments translated and emailed to me by Ali Moayedian, editor of the Iran-portal website payvand.com.

"But my desire to win a third Olympic medal was so strong that I wanted to fight until the last moment to participate and gain the honour and the immortality for Iran and myself."

I will forever remember the 350-pound (159-kilogram) Rezazadeh in his Athens dressing room that August night four years ago, still crowned by his laurel victory wreath, the Koran in his left hand.

He looked like a cartoon figure come to life - fists the size of hams at the end of Popeye forearms, his happy, fatigued face as wide as it was long, the sweat-stained ribbon of his Olympic gold medal barely circling the tree-trunk that served as his neck.

The historic drama that night had drained everyone in the arena. Rezazadeh's achievement - that a man could lift what he had just pushed overhead - was unthinkable.

Finally, after nearly an hour's wait for a quote as security and drug police and team officials and hangers-on elbowed around him:

"I think I gave a good performance," he said. "I was full of strength."

He extended his hand - his swallowed mine, actually - and he was bustled out the door.

Rezazadeh's "good performance" in the +105-kg class had been, in fact, historic. He had thrust a winning total of 472.5 kg - 1,040.6 pounds - over his head in the snatch lift and the clean and jerk. That equalled the Olympic record he had set in winning his first Games gold at Sydney as the youngest superheavyweight champion ever.

Rezazadeh successfully hoisted five of the six bars that were loaded before him in Athens, including a world-record 263 kg (579.8 pounds) in the clean and jerk. The five lifts totalled 1,131 kg, or 2,493 pounds. A ton and a quarter.

He retires now holding three world records: 213 kg in the snatch lift, 263 kg in the clean and jerk and 472 kg in the total.

Rezazadeh's victory in Athens was the most memorable event I've covered in a dozen Olympics, seated in the media tribune surrounded by the entire Iranian press corps who cheered him unabashedly and held their breath with each of his efforts.

Many sobbed with joy when their hero dropped to his knees and kissed the platform after his gold-clinching lift, flag-waving fans surging from the stands toward Rezazadeh on the stage, nearly overwhelming Greek security in an emotional display of affection.

His victory in Sydney four years earlier had ended a 44-year, non-boycott Olympics stranglehold on the superheavyweight class by Soviets and Russians. But he became an icon to his people in 2002 for a loyalty to his flag, turning down lucrative, perk-swollen offers from Turkey and Greece to change passports.

Rezazadeh was married a year later, his wedding carried live on Iranian television, and today he has a 5-year-old son, Abolfazl, named in honor of the Islamic Shi'ite martyr for whose help he cried before every Olympic lift.

"I'm certain Abolfazl will be able to break my records," he said a few days ago, already making plans to take coaching courses. "I wish that he will be able to do this, and I'll do all I can so one day he can take my place."

Moayedian believes that Rezazadeh might be in Beijing as an adviser to his country's weightlifting federation, though Iranian official Afshin Riahi emails word that the retired lifter won't make the trip.

So while the odds are as long as the Mighty Rez is wide, I still hope to speak with him again, this time for longer than 15 seconds.

Citius and Altius are wonderful to witness at any Olympics, but the magnificent Fortius that was Rezazadeh in Athens demonstrated an important truth: for one night, at least, Hercules was not merely a Greek myth.

[Jim Hooper]

Another way of saying it would be that now that he has to compete (at least somewhat more) clean(ly) after his thoroughly corrupt team got busted for doping, he isn't all that good after all . . . er, that is, he "can't make his record."  Mmm-hmmm, I bet not.

Ditto Mutlu.

Amazing how "the training" just ain't what it used to be for these guys in the wake of a big drug bust.  Suddenly they fall off a cliff and snivel into retirement.

What a joke.  Hopefully this helps pry open a slot for Casey.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

LOL. I didn't think anyone would say the truth on the matter, except me, and I figured everyone knew what I thought already. I also don't like his promoting of islam either and the bending of the rules to allow it on his singlete, let alone letting him compete against the rules after his team was busted. I hope our American lifters will make sure they check the bars at the Olympics spin well by turning them with their feet....

[Dave Chiu]

True enough -- one can often rattle an opponent by doing anything from offending to flattering them.

Muslims are very sensitive about the lack of respect implied by contact w/ the bottom of the foot/shoe (hence all the Iraqis seen whacking Saddam's statues/paintings w/ their sandals after our initial success there).

Still, none of us would appreciate an airhorn blaring just as we were about to start our lift, or fans chanting "Loo-ser, Loo-ser, ...".

A certain level of respect is good -- for the weight, for the physical/mental demands of the lift, for the hard work of all the athletes.

Stupid political correctness in the face of aggressive Islamicization is vile cowardice, but there ought to be a balance of respect, especially when it's so easy to do.

Besides, judging the bar spin w/ the hand is a LOT more effective -- spinning it w/ the foot is more of a nervous habit.