(The author is from Reuters)
This is perhaps the heaviest gold medal of Beijing Olympica Games. Matthias Steiner of Germany, the winner, held the gold medal of weightlifting men's 105kg+ with right hand while showing the picture of his late wife in the left hand. It's the most impressive moment of the Beijing Olympic Games.
His wife died in a car crash a year ago and since that terrible day Steiner has flung himself into his sport as if it was the only thing that could ever make life bearable. He has bulked up, abandoning all thoughts of staying in the sub-105kg category, moving up to the class in which there is no limit, in which the contestants take the stage with great, wobbling, pregnant bellies. No jockey-style wasting for them, the muscle is hidden away beneath a thick coat of warming fat.
Steiner put on a good six stones. He marched into the competition weighing 145kg, almost 23 stones. This is one of the oddest of all sports. The athletes seem to emerge, like trolls, from dark caves and come blinking into the bright lights of the competition venue to make just six lifts, perhaps five minutes in total stage time, all this to mark the work of the past four years, or, if you prefer, a lifetime.
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Gold medalist Matthias Steiner of Germany poses with a picture of his late wife Susann during the medal ceremony for the men's +105 kg weightlifting event during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in Beijing on August 19, 2008. [Agencies]
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The champion is not quite from this heartland. He is an Austrian who turned German after a row with his national federation. And so the competition unwound its drama. There is an element of poker in weightlifting: you declare the weight you will take, and then you amend it, throwing bluffs and dummies at your opponents. But there is one overriding principle - you can never go back. The weight on the bar can only ever go up. Thus the essential rule of competitive weightlifting is: know thyself.
It came down to three in the end, a Latvian, a Russian and the neo-Austrian. Viktors Scerbatihs, of Latvia, put down the marker and claimed the lead. Steiner added a weight, then declined it. So Evgeny Chigishev, of Russia, raised it up to the weight that would guarantee the lead and, with a titanic effort, did the job. One lift left in the competition, one lifter to make it. Steiner raised again, this time to the weight that would win the competition. Now all he had to do was lift it.
Ah, these moments in sport. How they get to you. How you never tire of them. The hush, the cheers, the renewed hush. Then the effort and the grunt and the groan, and the roars from the crowd; the first phase of the lift now complete. All - all! - he had to do was to raise 258kg above his head (say, a couple of meaty prop forwards). And the crowd united in a great surge of will, and the huge round weights began to rise, and then the knees locked and the elbows locked, and the three white lights were lit, and at the last, a thump as the weight hit the stage.
After that, there was a preposterous great man dancing like a child in wild, uncoordinated glee, while tears rolled in great manly gushes down his enormous face. Happiness and sadness are never all that far apart, we weep buckets for both, and Steiner was clearly unsure whether it was joy or grief that had overwhelmed him. But it was both, for a small miracle had taken place. Steiner had lifted the weight of the world from his shoulders; if only for a night.
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