Topic: Of course American weightlifters are cheated.

[Rhys Lucero]

Dimas front squats 290.
I saw Suley front squat 200 for 4 sets of 2.
Bulgaria's 91-kg Ivan Chakarov, a couple of days from competing, finished his workout with a 270-kg triple in the back squat.

None of the top twenty lifters in this country can clean and jerk what they front squat in earnest.  And no lifters in this country can squat with the top international lifters of equivalent body mass.

The fact that they are not American seems to make all the difference

[Rhys Lucero]

At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Bulgaria was stripped of two weightlifting gold medals and subsequently withdrew its entire weightlifting team after athletes tested positive for furosemide.
Such diuretics are used to lose weight but also can be used to mask the presence of other performance-enhancing drugs, such as steroids.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/2000/weightlifting/news/2000/09/21/bulgarian_tests_ap/

Of course the other countries are cheating. If Oscar was competing against tested athletes, he would be a Junior AND Senior world champion. After all, he back squats the same weight as Robert Murphy in the weight class below.

But let's get real. The world record, for instance, in the 94 kilo class is 232.5 KOLECKI Szymon, who, by the way has been popped. Let's say that you could control reality, and you had him pull his world record clean. Then at the instant of the jump under the weight you were to replace Kolecki with an American lifter (Murphy or even Kelly). What do you think would happen? The American lifter would get CRUSHED! Kelly front squats 245, Murphy only front squats 235. And this is under the controlled conditions of applied force through the entire range of motion of the front squat. When the weight is falling, as it is during the clean, the lifter may have far less time to halt the downward momentum of the weight. This can't be done without the sufficiant reserve squat strength provided by Dianobol.

[Rhys Lucero]

To assume recruitment will help US weightlifting is a simplification of the issue.  Recruitment will help increase the depth of talent, that is true.  And increasing the depth of talent could be seen as helping USA weightlifting because, presently, Olympic team size is dependent on World team placement.  More talent, more depth.  More depth, more Olympic team spots.  
 
But, to assume that higher levels of talent will correspond with increased weightlifting results is to miss the statistical nature of genetic variation.  It is wrong to assume that the lifters involved with weightlifting in this country over the past 15 years are not a representative sample of the weightlifting ability of the people that live in this country.  Just because we involve more people does not mean that we will achieve substantially higher American Records, which is a necessity in order to compete for medals at the Senior level.  
 
The common argument is: we need more talent pushing each other to high levels of achievement.  I agree that gym chemistry is important, but  weightlifting is not a team sport.  I have played NCAA Division I soccer, and have played against professional soccer players in Europe.  In soccer, the competitive level is determined by the players around you.  Playing with inferior players is like not having enough weight in the gym or not having a squat rack or not being allowed to drop the weights or not having chalk.  But these are not the type of problems facing the weightlifters in this country.  The bar and gravity are our opponent, and these are constant throughout the world.  The problems we face for increasing the competitiveness of USA weightlifting are chemical, political, and soon to be genetically engineered.

[Jim Storch]

Playing with inferior players is like not having enough weight in the gym or not having a squat rack or not being allowed to drop the weights or not having chalk. But these are not the type of problems facing the weightlifters in this country.

Actually for some not having a "good" place to train is their biggest problem (that and a lack of any coaching).  There are far too many places were the only gym around doesn't allow chalk and the dropping of weights, so these ARE the problems faced by many who decide to even give it a try.

People do tend to rise to there competitive environment and the best will rise to the top of their environment.

The bar and gravity are our opponent, and these are constant throughout the world.  

The bar is NOT our opponent it is our friend!  Without it weightlifting would be a very different sport and learning to work WITH the bar is how one lifts the most weight.

(Sorry to change the subject, but) Gravity is not a constant it does vary place to place and time to time.

The problems we face for increasing the competitiveness of USA weightlifting are chemical, political, and soon to be genetically engineered.

There is some truth in that quote.