Let’s geek out about statistics.
Since good (accessible) data was nowhere to be found online I collected the data from the official London 2012 Athletes Pages, as well as the weighlifting athletes’ profiles.
You can access the raw data here: Google Docs Spreadsheet, xls Excel Spreadsheet
I encourage you to take a look at it and play around with the data. Curious to see what some of you will come up with. Maybe we can find some interesting correlations.
For example:
- The average male super heavyweight weighs in at 139.5kg and is 185.9 cm tall.
- The average female super heavyweight weighs in at 99.5kg and is 170.1cm tall.
Here are some of the calculations I already did with them.
Click the images to open the bigger, interactive charts.
Average Height & Age per Weight Category (Bigger Version)
| Average Age per Country (Bigger) | Average Height per Country (Bigger) |
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Here are Height and Age Distributions. These are from my work spreadsheet, which is a bit messy. You can find ineractive versions of them in there.
Men’s Height Distribution
Men’s Age Distribution
Women’s Height Distribution
Women’s Age Distribution
And some looks at the extremes:
| Male | Female | |
| Youngest | 17 – Mirco Scarantino | 17Alberta Boatema Ampomah Beatriz Piron Sirivimon Pramongkhol Jun Zhou Khadija Mohammad |
| Oldest | 37 – Martin Tesovic,Tom R Goegebuer | 36 – Shih Hsu Huang, Natasha Perdue |
| Tallest | 198 cm – Velichko Cholakov | 178 cm – Sarah Robles |
| Smallest | 140 cm – Tuau Lapua Lapua | 142 cm – Sirivimon Pramongkhol |
| Heaviest | 170 kg – Velichko Cholakov | 154 kg – Holley Mangold |
Related: Weightlifting Statistics from the 2000-2012 Olympics
Cool data. I was curious about the 190 cm woman, as it is a gigantic height for a woman. Since she competes in the -53kg category I think it’s safe to assume her height is 5’3 not 6’3 as reported.
Which also happens to be 160cm instead of 190cm.
Thanks will correct that. I was wondering about that freak of nature too.
Yeah I looked her up, she is definitely not 6’3
Thanks for the info. Totally destroyed my hopes to seeing a lanky 190cm 53 weightlifter…
Also updated the charts. If you find more oddities, let me know.
Is it correct that the average height of the 63kg women is more than those in 69kg? Average for 69 is 161.29, for 63 is 164.17.
In the Raw Data there were only 7 w63kg listed (out of the 10 who ended up competing) at the time. So the smaller data set together with 3 women being 166cm+ (166,167,168) is responsible for the result
How can the average super heavy woman weigh 170 and the heaviest woman be 154?
Obviously wrong. Now searching for the typo
Tableau on All Things Gym? +10000 points
You know them?
First time I used it. Pretty cool app.
One: as already observed, the underlying data is sometimes sketchy.
Cholakov for example is 2.05m and his giant frame is mentioned in old Eurosport commentary where Goldstrom or Morgan note his size in foot.
http://london2012.bio.infostradasports.com/asp/lib/TheASP.asp?pageid=8937&personid=484512&sportid=206&ContainerSportID=-1&Cache=8
Two: the nature of the Olympics results in a somewhat skewed average as the inclusive approach lets not the respective raw world rankings compete, but includes wildcards to get global representation. In the restricted classes elite lifters tend to be shorter for their weight due to selection pressure and let’s be frank (more) usage of size building PEDs. With the supers some of the tiny (in WL terms) nations have only a few lifters anyway, and the overall strongest person is also the fattest irrespective of height (e.g. male <175cm +130kg combinations).
TL;DR: CHN+PRK+VIE or RUS+IRI (absolute terms) would adjust those charts.
Behador Moulaei…Shane Haman…Leonid Taranenko…Antonio Krastev…Serge Reding was great Superheavy lifters but was not giants (5’8″/5’10 1m73/1m78) and rhey w1snt fat !!!and Taranenko compete at 40 year aged….middle height istnt a stopping for compete in king caregory…