Chinese duo retain Olympic titles as weightlifting in Paris starts

China’s Hou Zhihui and Li Fabin retained their Olympic titles on Wednesday as weightlifting finally joined the Paris Olympic party, slimmed down and insisting it had cleaned up its act after major internal surgery.

Both winners broke Olympic records they set three years ago in Tokyo when their weight classes were first contested at the Games.

In the women’s 49-kilogram class, Hou needed the clean and jerk record of 117kg with her final lift to overtake Romanian Mihaela Valentina Cambei and win by one kilogram.

Over the two rounds Hou, who stands 1.46 metres (4-foot-10), hoisted 206kg. Surodchana Khambao of Thailand took bronze.

Earlier in the men’s 61-kg, the 31-year-old Li broke his Olympic record with 143kg in the opening snatch round. He went on to total of 310 kilograms over the two rounds in the lightest men’s class to beat Theerapong Silachai of Thailand by 7kg. Hampton Morris of the United States was third.

“I’ll give myself nine out of 10,” said Li. “The black spot was clean and jerk. But it is the Olympics and I won smoothly, so nine out of ten is appropriate.”

The eight remaining weight categories in Paris are new.

In the past, weightlifting, pockmarked by doping, has shuffled classes to create “clean” records. This time, the problem is its shrinking Olympic allocations.

In Rio in 2016, 260 weightlifters competed across 15 events – one more for men than for women. In Paris, the quota is down to 120, battling for 10 gold medals.

The sport is a victim of the drive to add more Olympic competitions without adding more competitors, but it is also a victim of its own murky past.

The sport lags only track and field for most failed Olympic doping tests.

No weightlifter failed a test in Tokyo but, after the Games, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach called weightlifting and boxing his “problem children” and threatened to boot them out.

By then long-time International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) president Tamas Ajan had been forced out following a 2020 German documentary that found, among a long list of accusations, he had covered up positive doping tests.

The IWF went through five presidents in 30 months, ending with the election of Iraqi Mohammed Jalood, along with a new executive board, in June 2022.

One of Jalood’s reforms was to shut the door on transgender athletes after New Zealander Laurel Hubbard became the centre of a media frenzy in Tokyo.

 ‘Cleaner’

He also brought in the International Testing Agency to work with a previously secretive sport.

“We are fully determined to change the way the world in general and the sport community in particular is looking at weightlifting,” Jalood told AFP on Wednesday.

“We went through a series of changes that aim at making our beloved sport more modern, reliable, well-governed, respected, and, of course, cleaner.”

Weightlifting has the advantage that it has been a source of medals for under-represented nations such as India, whose Chanu Saikhom Mirabai received loud support as she finished fourth on Wednesday, and Indonesia.

The Philipines won their first Olympic gold in weightlifting at Tokyo.

North Korea returned after a four-year absence to compete in the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, 13 of their 14 competitors won medals and the women set six world records, including all three in the event Hou won on Wednesday, but the team did not turn up for an Olympic qualifying event.

Drug issues still lurk.

Thursday’s 73kg men’s event could be affected by a promised Court for Arbitration in Sport hearing. Spanish weightlifter David Sanchez Lopez, the top-ranked non-qualifier, has asked for the Turkish team, which has one competitor, to be banned for doping offences.