Previously at the 2014 World Championships …
Hysen Pulaku (85kg, Albania) snatching 165kg.
Yes, we all know what happened after worlds, but I still love his lifting style. It’s so aggressive and 165kg is still 165kg, no matter if tests came back positive or not.
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(Video also on Facebook and Instagram @atginsta)
Hookgrip Slow Motion
“Yes, we all know what happened after worlds, but I still love his lifting style. It’s so aggressive and 165kg is still 165kg, no matter if tests came back positive or not.”
Absolutely! I still watch his training videos from time to time. Exceptional lifter. One of the alltime fastest under the bar.
Anyone have any info on him after worlds?
Is he coaching or has he stopped weightlifting all together after the liftetime ban?
i never understood the hype of hysen pulaku. he was a good lifter on international level, but not at any time he reached outstanding results in official competitions at senior’s division. there always were a few other lifters who showed better results and earned much less recognition..
his technique was some kind of special and probably the best for his athletic conditions, but far away from beeing as picture-perfect as from many chinese lifters, for example.
besides this, he put damage on the public perception of weightlifting at london olympic games 2012 and earned honours for the dumbest rerun of this in 2014.
i wish him the very best for his personal life, but i wont miss him on the weightlifting stage too much.
The hype (although I don’t think you can call it so) wasn’t about his results and/or appearances on stage.
It was his style of lifting, the sickening speed of how he performed the lifts, the “myth” and fascination of the Bulgarian method, his crazy max outs (look up “epic clean and jerk session” and tell me you’re not impressed) and maybe more than anything else the fact, that we got to see lots and lots of training videos from him, consistently provided by his gym.
There are only a handful of lifters with that amount of training coverage. After all, that’s the determining factor. Other examples are Clarence Kennedy and Milko Tokola who both achieved less than him on international stage, yet get the recognition (rightfully so).
Another thing .. judging by your words you know the weightlifting scene .. so how does the fact that s.o. got busted influence your perception of the athlete?
I don’t like his style. I like it when a weightlifter goes under the radar for a while, then comes back an unrecognizable beast, like 10kg on both lifts. That’s real man style; talk less, do more. Hysen’s style is uncomfortable (AKA ugly) form, tons of videos/news/updates, B group numbers, busted for the same substance twice in 2 consecutive competitions.
“The hype (although I don’t think you can call it so) wasn’t about his results and/or appearances on stage.”
yes, this is exactly the point – the hype (or however you want to call it) was not about his results on stage!
“It was his style of lifting, the sickening speed of how he performed the lifts, the “myth” and fascination of the Bulgarian method, his crazy max outs (look up “epic clean and jerk session” and tell me you’re not impressed) and maybe more than anything else the fact, that we got to see lots and lots of training videos from him, consistently provided by his gym.”
in the first moment i was impressed by the numbers, too. but then i realized, we will probaly never see comparable numbers on international competition stage, his lifts are really fast but his technique and form looks quite special (to give it a non-comitted description) and the method of his old bulgarian coach may be valuable when you have to form one world class athlete out of a big bunch of talented lifters, but not necessarily is the way of choose from the point of view of an individual athlete, who wants to have a long and successful career.
i have to say, personally i am much more impressed by the controlled style of soviet programming and/or the technical perfection of chinese lifters than by this style. purely a matter of taste.
“There are only a handful of lifters with that amount of training coverage. After all, that’s the determining factor. Other examples are Clarence Kennedy and Milko Tokola who both achieved less than him on international stage, yet get the recognition (rightfully so).”
yes, you’re right. and i have similar feelings regarding them… but sure, its always also a question of how much coverage we get..
“Another thing .. judging by your words you know the weightlifting scene .. so how does the fact that s.o. got busted influence your perception of the athlete?”
hmm, i think there are three types of athletes: first the idealistic ones, who dont want/are able to use something. maybe not many, but my biggest respect for them.
than the majority of successful lifters, who move along with the system in most of the countries: use it in training phases, clean up before tested competitions (or maybe get in contact with some controllers?).
and the last group of athletes or federations, who use it but cant hide it (repeatedly!), endanger the future of weightlifting as an olympic discipline and destroy the leftovers of reputation.
Ok, now I’m getting your point of view. It’s comprehensible – as you say “matter of taste”. I definitely agree with your remarks on the bulgarian method though. I go as far as to say that he might have been better off with different programming although that is speculation of course. That being said – for me – bulgarian max-outs remain the best training method to see on tape. His form is a bit ugly because of knee travel and sometimes unstable jerk recoveries, but thats about it. It is not pretty in a common sense but it isn’t inefficient (for him). His best front squat under Abadjiev was 220 I believe and he jerked 211 max. With that in mind, it’s impressive to watch how he gets the job done. Nice discussion by the way, always good to have a bunch of different opinions 🙂
Excellent discussion, mrtn86 and Magneto. Both of you raise some good questions. Thanks for the posts.
as one of my friends always says.. a positive doping test just means you were too stupid to cycle off… Pulaku must be a raging idiot to pop positive in his first meet back in international competition. Virtually everyone in the sport is on gear, it’s not that hard to cycle off… well apparently it is for North Koreans and Albanians.
A couple of things.
Often times as an athlete you do as you’re being told. So if your coaches say you will be fine, you have the choice of taking or not lifting required weights and leave the team.
The Albanians, like other teams, do test their athletes before heading out for international competitions. I think in Hysen’s and Godelli’s case it was being mentioned that both tested negative in their internal tests.
So it’s not as easy as you make it out to be.
Clearly there are always complicating factors involved, however, doping is probably the most scientific thing in the world of weightlifting. Just like any medication or substance you put in your body, each type of steroid has a half life which is a property of the substance itself and some other factors relating to a particular person’s ability to process said substance. It is not a guess as to when the body will clear the substance. It is merely a calculation. So you say there are incompetent people on the team that are also responsible for the positive test. I’m sure there are. But another hallmark of a stupid person is surrounding him/herself with incompetent people. And if the internal tests really were negative, that again speaks to the ineptitude of the Albanian weightlifting federation and those involved, athletes included. If you want to look at the weightlifters as bystanders and victims of poor coaching and training then so be it, but I chose to view them as complicit in all the activities.
And as someone trained in the medical profession, I can tell you that planning a time table for a substance to be taken and then fully excreted from the body is fairly easy when in capable hands.
from time to time there are new and improved testing methods and apparently some federations need longer to adapt their off-cycling-schemes.
although I agree that the testing methods are constantly being improved, the data and research for these methods are also published concurrently in medical journals, so it’s not like the information on new diagnostic testing is not available. It’s out there. I maintain that popping positive says more about the sophistication of the federation and their training cycles as opposed to unforeseen improvements in testing sensitivity and specificity.
The issue is that, despite any clear timetable, IWF testing has improved to better detect probably even minute amounts. Things are not always black and white, either, as Gregor points out.
As to “the hype”.. I think this video speaks volumes about the hype. Nothing casual about a 14 year-old putting 143 overhead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRdxl6fTFMo
no doubt, this is impressive footage and he had a lot of potential. if he was in the russian youth team for example, they would have protected him from getting busted.
also his lifts as a 14-year-old seem to have a better form in some technical aspects than years later in the vids from the time under abadjiev. no need to push such a young talent so hard in multiple ways without any regards to his future carreer. 2016 and 2020 would have been realistic long-term goals for him to fight for olympic medals.
vyacheslav yarkin reminds me a little bit of pulaku..but im sure, his development will take another direction.
about the hype: i know, he was gifted. but there are a lot of talents, who rise and fall at once. in the end it matters what someone lifts at international competitions in senior category, for whether he becomes a great lifter or not.