Category — Weight Lifting

At 5’1″, weightlifter Long Qingquan may be short but he is, no doubt about it, very strong. I’m sure he is stronger than you. Can you lift 162 kilograms? Can you? Can you? Nah. Just as I thought.

It is also likely that this kid is younger than you; he’s only 17 years old, in case you are wondering. That means he can still improve not only in the weightlifting department but in the height department as well.

Long bagged China’s sixth gold medal in the Olympic Games beating our Olympian to Watch, Vietnam’s Hoang Anh Tuan who won the silver medal and Indonesia’s Eko Yuli Irawan who settled for the bronze. Looks like them Asians are doing a good job in weightlifting, no?

By the way, it’s still quiet on the western front. For those of you keeping score, it’s six gold medals for China and two gold medals for the United States.

Related:
Xian Dongmei Makes it Five Golds for China
Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia Make it Four Golds for China
Olympic Results: Guo Wenjun Makes it Three Golds for China
Pang Wei Makes it Two Golds for China
Chen Xiexia Scores One Gold for China

[Read more →]

If Czech shooter Katerina Emmons gained the distinction as the first gold medalist in Beijing, weightlifter Chen Xiexia will be remembered as the first Chinese athlete to win a gold medal for the host country. Eat your heart out, United States, the Chinese have a gold medal now.

Photo credit: chinadaily.com

Turkish weightlifter Halil Mutlu is a three time Olympic gold medalist. He hopes to get another gold when he goes to Beijing in August. Who could stop him from getting his fourth gold medal? Chinese weightlifters who’ve been trying to out-lift him for years.

Here’s a quote from Halil Mutlu about his prospects in Beijing: “The Chinese have been trying to beat me for years without success. They will try to be successful this time. I need to be more careful not to let them do this.”

PHOTO SOURCE: mynet.com

Argh. Drugs. Bad news for weightlifting and the Olympic movement in general. Bad news for the Greek Olympic team in particular.

A DPA Report: A second doping test on a group of 11 Greek weightlifters who initially tested positive for banned substances was also found to be positive, making the athletes unlikely competitors for the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics, reports said Friday.

The second test was conducted in a laboratory in Cologne, Germany and confirmed results first announced on April 4, which found almost the entire men’s and women’s national teams to have failed tests conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Read the rest here. The sad thing about positive doping reports like this is that they no longer have shock value. Reports about use of banned drugs by athletes have become staple in the daily news so we, members of the public, shrug our shoulders and say, “Huh, what else is new?” Sad.

Let’s include Melanie Roach in our Dara Mama Club. But what’s the Dara Mama Club? Uhm, its a special category we are creating here at The Olympian Blog referring to moms who have qualified or are trying to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. We are naming the club after the first Olympic mom we blogged about, U.S. swimmer Dara Torres.

Above photo shows Melanie Roach with her son Drew who was diagnosed with autism. You can read Melanie’s very touching story and her upcoming attempt to qualify for the Olympics here. We hope she makes it to Beijing. Go Melanie! Go Dara Mamas!