Weightlifting

In various forms, weightlifting has been popular for centuries. Strongmen of all types often performed at various fairs in the Middle Ages. In the 19th century, professional strongmen often toured with carnivals or vaudeville shows. However, weightlifting as a sport became organized only in the late 19th century.

The first governing body of the sport was founded on 10 June 1905, in Duisburg, Germany, as the Amateur Athleten Weltunion, with four founding members (Denmark, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands), overseeing both weightlifting and wrestling. However, this organization did not last long. Meetings on 15 July 1912, during the Stockholm Olympics, gave birth to the Internationaler Weltverband für Schwerathletik. During its first congress, held on 5-9 June 1913, in Berlin, Germany, with the presence of nine members (Austria, Bohemia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Russia, and Sweden), the federation would be officially established, becoming the Internationaler Amateur-Weltverband für Schwerathletik. This organization was renamed to Internationaler Kraftsportverband in 1920, but it disappeared in 1921. This latter organization governed not only weightlifting and wrestling, but also boxing, tug-of-war and weight throwing.

The current governing body for the sport is the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), which has 193 affiliated National Federations as of January 2026. The federation was founded on 23 August 1920, during the Antwerpen Olympics, as the Fédération Internationale Haltérophile (FIH), and it was the first only responsible for weightlifting. It was renamed to Fédération Internationale Haltérophile et Culturiste (FIHC) in 1950, when bodybuilding was added, but this was again deleted in 1969, and the name became Fédération Haltérophile Internationale (FHI). The current name was adopted on 6 September 1972.

Men’s weightlifting has been on the programme of all the Olympic Games, except in the years of 1900, 1908, and 1912. Originally, there were no weight classes, only an open competition. At Athinai 1896 and 1906, there were also one-handed lifts. The programme has varied little, except for the addition of more and more weight classes, until more recent years, when the number of classes for men has decreased. Beginning in 1993, the weight classes in international weightlifting have been changed several times, with a completely new set of world records. This is to eliminate the possibility of earlier records having been set by drug users prior to stricter drug controls.

Before Olympic inclusion, women’s weightlifting was contested once at the World Games, in 1997. Women made their Olympic début in weightlifting at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, with seven weight classes.

Beginning in 1928 in Amsterdam, the three Olympic lifts were standardized as the military press, the snatch, and the clean & jerk. Because of difficulties judging the press, and because there was some concern that the lift was biomechanically dangerous to lifters’ backs, it was eliminated from international competition after the 1972 München Olympics. Today, lifters compete only in the snatch and in the clean & jerk at the Olympics.

Weightlifting was dominated by the Soviet Union after its entry to the Olympics in 1952 in Helsinki. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bulgaria challenged that dominance, although a number of its lifters ran afoul of drug testing, notably in 1992 in Barcelona. The United States was once also a weightlifting power. In recent Games, China has emerged as a strong nation in the sport, and, with 67 medals and 43 Olympic titles as of 2024, has already surpassed the Soviet Union in medal total and gold medal count.

However, the only five lifters to have won three Olympic golds all come from countries not mentioned above: Halil Mutlu and Naim Süleymanoğlu from Türkiye; Lasha Talakhadze from Georgia; Pyrros Dimas from Greece; and Georgian-born Akakios Kakiasvili, with two golds representing Greece, after winning his first gold for the Unified Team in 1992. There are also five male weightlifters with four medals won at the Olympics, but, of these, only one man has won more than one gold, that being Pyrros Dimas.

In the women’s competition, Chen Yanqing, Hou Zhihui, and Li Wenwen (all from China), Hsu Shu-Ching (TPE), and Rim Jong-Sim (PRK) have all won two gold medals. Four other female weightlifters – Jang Mi-Ran (KOR), Lydia Valentín (ESP), Kuo Hsing-Chun (TPE), and Raema Lisa Rumbewas (INA) – have won a total of three medals at the Olympic Games.

Weightlifting has also been featured at the Youth Summer Olympics since the competition’s inception, at Singapore 2010, with events for boys and girls.