Weightlifting: Gargoyles of a bizarre world

By PETER CALDER

He never saw it coming and we never saw it happen.

Only when the moment was replayed, several sickening times on the big screens on either side of the stage, did the full, monstrous truth of it become clear.

Latvian super heavyweight weightlifter Raimonds Bergmanis had hoisted 180kg from the floor beneath his feet to the clear air above his head in a single movement.

The snatch, it is colourfully and aptly called, and he'd done it with seeming ease to start his quest for minor glory in less fancied Group B.

But as he came to the full standing position, the vein-popping, eye-bulging, quivering pose in which successful lifters await the blessed release of the judges' lights, something hideous happened.

His right forearm snapped backwards at a grotesque right angle, parallel with the floor and half of the weight bore down on a support suddenly as weak as a flax frond.

The lifter, who three years ago came fifth in the world in one of those razzamatazz strong men competitions Las Vegas dreams up for weightlifters, was suddenly transformed into a helpless mortal.

His head jerked back and the eyes rolled wild and crazy in his face.

It was an expression more of terror than pain - the pain would come later - an expression of instant certainty that his life as a lifter was over. And its replay stilled, for a while at least, the glee of the capacity crowd at the Sydney Convention Centre at Darling Harbour.

For a moment, we realised that we had come to see the titans of world sport - but that even these muscle men are breakable humans.

The superheavies are the Games' most defiant challenge to nature.

Ian Thorpe's paddle feet may make him an aquatic freak; Maurice Greene may eat up track faster than the Creator intended; and Mark Philippoussis' serve is at times too fast to see.

But these athletes are more monsters than men.

The average bodyweight of the big boys in Group A is well north of 140kg and defending Olympic champion, Andrei Chemerkin, has weighed in at almost 175kg (those who can't think in metrics might be more impressed by 27 stone 6 pounds).

At this level, when they hoist the steel bar to shoulder height in the two-stage clean and jerk, it groans under the weights and waves back and forth like a reed.

These men-mountains, unlike their mini-versions, eschew for the most part the wide leather belts which stops the abdominal wall herniating and popping like a blown-out tyre.

As the public address system announces each new mark ("Load the bar to ... " he says, and it sounds like a torturer's instructions for greater pain) we ooh and we aah - and the big men never flinch.

The favourite, Chemerkin, the biggest of the big men vying for the title of the strongest man in the world, is considered a freak even in this bizarre world, mainly because he's a bit of a dud at the snatch.

His apocalyptic girth - his lycra suit is stretched so tight over his belly that it proclaims his country of origin as R u s s i a - inhibits his ability to lift the bar in a single movement.

A cop in his hometown of Stavropol, he doesn't wear a uniform because there isn't one big enough but presumably he doesn't need the livery of authority when he has the bearing of it and it's safe to assume the crime rate is low.

In the end, Chemerkin is not even in the running.

His best snatch, 202.5kg, is eclipsed by the efforts of the eventual medallists who outdo each other serially to set three Olympic and world records in a few minutes.

And the ultimate triumph belongs to Iranian Hossein Rezazadeh, who, having claimed back his world snatch record, sets a new Olympic record and two world records, one after another as he climbs to a total of 472.5kg.

This, as a writer in the Sydney Morning Herald remarks the next day, means snatching the equivalent of two family-size fridges, and clean-and-jerking three.

Afterwards, an impassive Rezazadeh says he beat better opponents "with the help of God."

He goes on to explain that the phrase he bellowed before each lift was the name of a warrior, the brother of another Hossein, who slew the infidel in a famous battle in a year we call AD 600.

No one thinks to mention that, if God created man in His image, bodies like these were never on the Almighty's drawing board.