Rahimov, competing in the 77-kilogram weight class, shocked his Rio Olympics audience by totaling 379 kg in the clean and jerk, which won him a gold medal and broke a world record in the process.
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“I have been practicing in Azerbaijan and when I returned to Kazakhstan I continued to practice”.
The rest of Kazakhstan’s team barely avoided being excluded from the Rio Games entirely after repeated failures of retests of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Games. However, Rahimov got the gold medal due to weighing in lighter.
Weightlifting competitions at the Rio Games have been hit hard by doping bans levied against the Russian, Bulgarian, and several Kazakh competitors.
Indeed, Kazakhstan was only allowed to compete at Rio 2016 as the doping cases involved had not been fully processed, according tot he International Weightlifting Federation.
Egypt’s Mohamed Mahmoud won bronze with a combined 361kg.
Despite a near miss from a second Olympic gold medal, Lyu looked elated.
In fencing, Russia’s Inna Deriglazova gave her home country its second title of the Rio Games, beating Elisa Di Francisca in the women’s foil. This left both Rahimov and Xiaojun with a total of 349 kilograms, or about 770 pounds, lifted over the two phases of competition, but Rahimov edged Xiaojun in the tiebreaker because he weighed less.
“When normal people were asleep, we were training”, Rahimov said. “When the snow was deep, you know how it is in Kazakhstan, we went out for training at 11 or 12 [at night]”, Rahimov said.
“Maybe after some doping controls, some things will change”, Mahmoud said.
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The Egyptian lifter placed second in the 69kg category at the 2014 World Weightlifting Championships in Almaty, and in 2015 he won two bronze medals at the World Championships in the United States.
