Meanwhile in China …
This performance deserved its own post.
24 year old Olympic champion, Shi Zhiyong (69kg) snatching 163kg and clean & jerking 197kg!
This is an unofficial world record total of 360kg, beating Liao Hui’s 359kg total from 2014 worlds.
Cannot wait to see him at Worlds. Slowly becoming my favourite lifter. So passionate, you gotta love his lifting!!
The way he celebrates; when he retires and if he decides to opens a training gym, he should call it Primal Weightlifting.
He can certainly get 165 + 200 in a short time.
If so, I hope he displays it. One big difference between Shi and Liao is that Shi’s out there giving his best while Liao likes to save himself for later and tease his audience, leaving them wanting for more. Quite frankly, I don’t like that and don’t think it’s smart for weightlifters to inch the WR up kg by kg thinking that that way, they can amaze the fans over and over again. The main reason is that as an athlete, you never know which comp is your last. You might get injured in your next session and never lift like a pro again or you might just one time feel that your training numbers aren’t cycling back up like they used to only to realize that you’re old now and your last peak was the best you’ll get in this lifetime. Liao Hui is guilty of the hubris of purposefully not doing his best (when he snatched 166, I was hoping he’d follow 193 with 199 or some other number to push the total WR up but he threw his last lift out saving more WRs for later) so if his 359 is beaten by Shi’s 360, serves him right. Lu Xiaojun’s peak was likely 2013; I’d never seen him clean and jerk 204 as easily as he did then and what did he do? Throw his last 211 out. He could have at least attempted 207, 208 or so to push the total WR higher but he wanted to save it for later and now, for him, there is no later. Rahimov was 1kg off from his 380 WR and next time, someone might get it.
I hope Shi doesn’t take part in any of this foolishness. If one day, he can do 165+202, unleash it. Let it all out and push the WR directly to 367 in one go. Don’t save it for later cus you don’t know if there will ever be a later. And when you’re too old to lift your best anymore and you see some young gun show up and beat your WR, you’ll regret you didn’t push it out of his reach while you still could.