THE ARNOLD WEIGHTLIFTING CHAMPIONSHIPS: THE GREATEST SHOW IN WEIGHTLIFTING!


by Dan Bell Weightlifting came to the Arnold Expo


in 2003 as a fringe event, given a chance by Arnold Schwarzenegger and his partner, Jim Lorimer, to bring the spotlight back to an Olympic sport in decline in the U.S. Hav- ing begun his career as a weightlifter on the Austrian national team, Arnold still has a soft spot in his heart for his fi rst iron-game love. Jim Lorimer, along with lifting and coaching legend Frazier Ferguson, organized and ran the 1970 World Weightlifting Championship here in Columbus, at which Vasily Alexiev broke the 500 pound Clean & Jerk barrier. Arnold and Jim wanted to see U.S. weight- lifting prosper again and wanted to create something special for the sport. That assignment went to Megan Torn-


strom DeFourny and Mark Cannella of the Columbus Weightlifting Club. This new and exciting Weightlifting event grew with the Arnold Expo, which evolved into the Ar- nold Sports Festival, with multiple Olympic sports, thousands of athletes and hundreds of thousands of fans. In its seventh year, the Arnold Weightlifting Championships re- mains the Greatest Show in Weightlifting, helping to fulfi ll Arnold’s dream. The fi rst Arnold Weightlifting Champion-


ships in 2003 began with huge fanfare as Me- gan and Mark managed to secure the entire U.S. team from the Olympic Training Center, including Olympic Bronze medalist Cheryl Hayworth and the strongest Olympic lifter in U.S. history, Shane Hamman. Presented in a non-traditional competitive format, the meet intrigued the crowd, exhilarated the athletes and drew more spectators than most National Weightlifting meets. Wanting to increase the visibility of both


the Warm-up room and Main Platform, Weightlifting was moved the next year to its new home on the main concourse at the intersection of two main hallways. The new venue afforded the meet an opportunity to innovate. Megan and Mark opened up the warm-up room to the hallway, a fi rst in


Weightlifting, giving hundreds of thousands of passing fans a look into the hidden part of the sport. Soon crowds of people were stopping to watch national and world class Weightlifters prepare to walk onto the com- petition platform. The open warm-up room innovation has been a big hit and has drawn standing room crowds ever since. Along with


the room and non-traditional meet


innovative warm-up formats,


the Arnold Weightlifting Championships has become the most popular meet in the U.S. for athletes, coaches, offi cials and fans alike. Every year, the event offers some- thing special. In 2004, the prize money had increased to over $ 10,000, drawing elite lifters from around the world to compete for the top money. Oleg Kechko,


former


Belorussian Olympian, just edged out Ar- men Ghazarian of Armenia for the fi rst prize. 2004 also saw the beginning of a new tra- dition, the appearance of former Olympic and World Championship medalists from around the globe to be honored and share their enthusiasm and expertise with future champions of the sport. Leonid Zhabotin- sky, Soviet heavyweight gold medal win- ner in the ’64 and ’68 Games, was the fi rst of many Weightlifting greats to appear at this event. Leonid is one of Arnold’s weight- lifting heroes. Arnold recounted having watched Zhabo carry the Soviet Flag with one hand in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games as a moment of inspira- tion as a young weightlifter. The Arnold Weightlifting Championships has honored the contributions of many former champi- ons of the sport every year since, including Tommy Kono, Chuck Vinci, Ike Berger, Yuri Vardanyan, Joe Dube, members of the 1980 Olympic Team and many more. By 2005, this event had caught the eye of the Chinese, who sent their national head coach, Chen Wenbin, along with two Olympic and World Championship medalists for an Expo Main Stage demonstration. Randy Strossen of


6 >> WEIGHTLIFTING.TEAMUSA.ORG


IronMind Magazine teamed with Columbus Weightlifting to welcome the Chinese to this event and make sure they had the full Arnold Sports Festival experience including a friendly pinball competition at an Arnold after party. At the contest, Oleg Kechko fought 2004


US Olympian Chad Vaughn in an epic back- and-forth battle with Oleg hitting a 195 kilogram (429 Pound) clean & jerk to the screaming guitars of AC-DC for the win. The packed house erupted and could not have been more appreciative, when Chad came out and gave Oleg a congratulatory hug. It turned out that titanic battle between


the two was for second and third place af- ter 2005 World Champion, Dimitri Klokov, snatched fi rst place with six perfect lifts, totaling 400 kilos (880 Pounds) with expert coaching by former Soviet legend Yuri Vardanian. Quite the athletic lifter, Dimitri is smooth as a panther and strong as a bull. None of his lifts were ever in doubt. The 2006 Arnold Weightlifting Cham-


pionships saw more of Dimitri, coming off the World Championships and in a lighter weight class, wanting another taste of the Arnold. He met Donny Shankle in another epic battle, this time getting edged out by a kilo by the American. The crowd loved the animated Shankle and screamed them- selves hoarse at his win. That Sunday, the 3rd place fi nisher in the Arnold Strongman, Misha Klokaev of Russia, stopped by the Weightlifting venue and wanted to demo lift. As his fi rst love was Weightlifting, he wanted to give the Sunday crowd and youth Weightlifters a treat. Time was made and Misha wowed the crowd and the young- sters by hitting 240 kilos (528 Pounds) - the heaviest clean & jerk ever done in the US! Misha enjoyed bringing fans to their feet and stayed for an hour signing autographs for star-struck kids (and a few shy adults), en- couraging the youth competitors to “always go for gold.”


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