Weightlifting Rule Leaves Super-Heavy Athletes Breathless at 2024 Olympics

On Aug. 10, the world’s strongest — and largest — weightlifters gathered in the South Paris Arena for the Men’s +102KG weightlifting event at the 2024 Olympics.

Some competitors were seen breathless throughout the event as they scrambled to recuperate while battling with the barbell and each other for medals.

A weightlifting rule involving the time allotted to athletes between attempts is applied equally regardless of stature and is partially to blame.

Credit: Jessie Johnson / @barbellstories

Catch Your Breath

Commentators welcomed fans to the start of the event by remarking on the size of the athletes in attendance.

“Just to give you some idea of the size of these men, Georgia’s Lasha Talakhadze is a man-mountain,” they said. “He’s 6’6” and weighed in at 178.45 kilograms (393.4 pounds).”

Talakhadze weighed in as the second-biggest athlete behind Iran’s Ali Davoudi. As the event deepened and the stakes climbed higher, Talakhadze, Davoudi, and the other Men’s “supers” struggled to regulate their breathing before (and after) their lifts.

“At the Olympics, we get a one-minute clock once the bar is loaded to make our attempt,” says Caine Wilkes, a super-heavyweight 2020 Olympian for Team USA. “If the athlete ‘follows themselves,’ they’re awarded two minutes.”

To ‘follow oneself’ in weightlifting means that an athlete makes multiple attempts on stage back-to-back without another lifter coming out in between.

Athlete appearances are typically staggered as weightlifters attempt to outdo each other by small margins, but there are exceptions.

Georgia’s three-time Olympic Champion Talakhadze, who has lifted more than any weightlifter in history, is an exception to the staggered rollout. As the strongest man in the field at every event he’s attended for the past decade, Talakhadze is usually the final athlete with remaining attempts.

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En route to his third Olympic gold in Paris, Talakhadze finally met his match and only narrowly clinched gold ahead of Armenia’s Varazdat Lalayan and Bahrain’s Gor Minasyan.

In 2022, BarBend correspondent Brian Oliver reported on behalf of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) that Talakhadze had been advised by his personal doctor to shed body weight, citing heart problems.

At the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Talakhadze was seen panting and listless backstage as his team attempted to cool him down. Talakhadze had attempts remaining after all his competitors had finished.

“Riyadh was one of the hottest places I’d ever competed, even though the venue was climate-controlled,” Wilkes recalls.

The time-limit rule Wilkes describes is applied uniformly and is not exclusive to the Olympic Games. The lightest weightlifters at the Olympics are the women who occupy the 49-kilogram (108-pound) division. They are given two-minute breaks as well if they have to follow themselves.

Wilkes notes that short periods of rest can cause issues with recovery: “Sometimes, if we need more time, we’ll call for weight changes on the barbell, since any change made will stop the clock,” he says.

Wilkes also revealed that some super-heavyweights will replicate these conditions during their training by intentionally resting shorter than they’d prefer to help develop better conditioning and keep their breathing in check.

According to the American Heart Association, an athlete whose heart rate is elevated too long during exercise puts themselves at risk of high levels of troponin, which are considered a potential marker of cardiac damage.

Credit: Jessie Johnson / @barbellstories

Not all large-bodied athletes are troubled by abbreviated rest times in weightlifting meets.

“I personally don’t mind that all lifters have the same rest times; the current rules help keep the competition moving,” Wilkes says.

But when you’re the strongest man alive, literally, it’s a different game. Back-room cameras have shown Talakhadze with labored breathing at events like the European or World Championships, as he is fanned by his coach in the moments before his next appearance.

Shortness of breath didn’t stop Talakhadze from claiming the gold medal at the 2024 Olympics. And like every other time in the past — Talakhadze has been undefeated internationally for over a decade — nor could any of his competitors.