The disciples who pray at the altar of Lasha Talakhadze speak of the 500-kilogram Total as though it might as well be the Rapture; the crowning and borderline-otherwordly achievement of the closest thing weightlifting has to a living deity.
The premise behind the big 500 is simple enough that both diehard fans and starry-eyed newcomers who have not followed Talakhadze’s career that closely can romanticize it.
No human being has ever lifted 500 kilograms as a combined result of their snatch and clean & jerk, weightlifting’s two competitive disciplines, in a competition.
Talakhadze put 500 in his personal crosshairs over a decade before he won his third consecutive Olympic gold medal at Paris 2024. Fans have followed suit, but Talakhadze’s hopes of achieving that goal may have quietly slipped away over two years ago.
Lasha Talakhadze’s 500KG Dream
Shortly before Talakhadze took to the stage on August 10 in the Men’s +102KG weightlifting event, his personal coach Giorgi Asanidze gave an interview about their plans for both Paris and the infamous 500.
“The goal of 500 [kilograms in the Total] was set 10 years ago,” Asanidze said. “We are moving towards this goal step by step.”
Talakhadze had just wrapped up his career as a Junior athlete a decade ago. He was also serving a two-year suspension from the sport for failing a doping test. At the time, his best competitive Total was 415, set at the event from which he was disqualified.
Asanidze continued:
“Since there has never been a three-time super-heavyweight Olympic Champion, our primary goal is to retain the title. After that, we can go for the 500.”
Talakhadze won the 2024 Olympics in Paris, though only just. Silver medalist Varazdat Lalayan of Armenia trailed him by three kilograms; when they battled last, at the 2023 World Championships, Talakhadze beat Lalayan to gold by 13.
Not only are Talakhadze’s adversaries — who in years past couldn’t hope to overtake the Georgian giant — closing in, his own strength has yet to recover from an injury he suffered in 2022.
Lasha Talakhadze: Age, Injury, & Implications
Talakhadze returned from his ban in ’13 with a win at the 2015 World Championships. For the six years that followed, he won every event he attended, pushing his Total closer and closer to 500 along the way.
Here are his best Totals each year:
2015: 454KG | World Weightlifting Championships
2016: 473KG | Rio Olympic Games
2017: 477KG | World Weightlifting Championships
2018: 474KG | World Weightlifting Championships
2019: 484KG | World Weightlifting Championships
2020: 470KG | Roma World Cup
2021: 492KG | World Weightlifting Championships
Talakhadze set three all-time world records and outperformed his own 2020 Olympics Total at Worlds in ’21. He was only eight kilos away from making sports history.
But on Apr. 20, 2022, Talakhadze suffered an injury to his leg a month prior to the European Championships. His sports physician posted the incident as well as Talakhadze’s subsequent medial treatment on social media:
Editor’s Note: The video above shows an athlete suffering an injury on camera. Viewer discretion is advised.
Despite visible agony, Talakhadze won Euros a month later (once again, Lalayan came second). He managed 462 kilograms in the Total, and wouldn’t be seen again on a weightlifting stage until December, where he put 466 on the board at Worlds.
Since his injury, Talakhadze’s team have pivoted to a more conservative strategy; he competes less frequently and rarely calls for more than he needs to maintain his win streak.
In 2019, the last “normal” year — no worldwide pandemic, no Olympic Games — before his injury, Talakhadze competed four times.
Since the incident, Talakhadze has exclusively performed at the European and World Championships.
Credit: International Weightlifting Federation
Talakhadze has yet to reclaim his former strength. Though he is slowly inching his way back up, grievous injuries can derail the career of any high-level athlete — at 6’6″ and 400-ish pounds, Talakhadze has a tougher climb than most.
“Strength deficits often persist long after initial injury,” said a dozen professional coaches and physical therapists in a 2022 article for the journal Arthroscopy, Sports Medicine, and Rehabilitation. (1)
The authors also noted athletes, barring setbacks, “should ultimately return to full competition without any restrictions.” Their discussion did not center around pro weightlifters.
“Lifters in lighter weight classes, on average, tend to recover faster, though timelines vary from athlete to athlete” says Doctor of Physical Therapy, weightlifter, and founder of Clinical Athlete Dr. Quinn Henoch. “Larger lifters at advanced stages of their careers simply work with heavier weights, and when returning from injury, must travel further to return to their peaks.”
Strength is more easily regained than built, but it takes time. Time is not on Talakhadze’s side.
On Aug. 12, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) reported that 7 out of 10 gold medalists in Paris were 25 or younger; a substantial increase from Tokyo’s 5 of 14.
Just 3 out of the 12 super-heavyweight men who competed in Paris are older than Talakhadze.
Cracks have begun to emerge in Talakhadze’s once-impeccable lifting as well. In Paris, he missed one of his three snatches; the first of nine over the course of three Games since 2016. Before injuring himself in 2022, Talakhadze had made 24 good lifts in a row at the World Championships between 2017 and 2021.
Between injury, age, and already having achieved more in his career than basically any other weightlifter ever — there’s nowhere to climb once you’ve already scaled the mountain — the odds of hitting the 500 are not in Talakhadze’s favor.
Silver Linings
There’s nothing inherently special about Totaling 500 kilograms (besides the fact that no one has ever done it before). It’s just a nice, round number.
With the deck stacked against him, it’s increasingly unlikely that Talakhadze will achieve his goal. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing else to look forward to from the Georgian:
The Men’s super-heavyweight category has functionally been a battle for silver for almost 10 years. If Talakhadze has plateaued, fans may finally be treated to some exhilarating back-and-forths in the class.
The Men’s super-heavyweight event in Paris featured more snatch attempts at or above 215 kilograms than at any weightlifting meet in history, thanks to bold efforts from Lalayan and Bahrain’s Gor Minasyan.
Talakhadze is also close to breaking one of weightlifting’s longest win streaks. Soviet weightlifter Vasily Alekseyev won the World Championships eight times in a row between 1970 and ’77. Talakhadze currently has seven straight wins to his name between 2015 and 2023.
Three of Alekseyev’s World Championships wins occurred while weightlifting still contested the clean & press event. The lift was removed beginning in ’73.
Talakhadze’s Worlds win streak matches that of Naim Süleymanoğlu, the “Pocket Hercules” and kilo-for-kilo strongest weightlifter ever.
Talakhadze’s dream of a 500-kilogram Total is (probably) dead and buried. Despite widespread expectations that he’d announce his retirement after Paris, Talakhadze and his team have indicated he’s not done with weightlifting just yet:
“If my physical condition gives me the chance, I will stay in this sport,” he said shortly after claiming gold in Paris.
By “chance”, is Talakhadze referring to the mythical 500? Only time will tell. What’s clear is Talakhadze has no intentions of letting anyone else summit the Men’s super-heavyweight podium at the same competition as him.
I want to end my sports career without losing,” Talakhadze told Georgian media shortly after returning home from Paris. “If I see that I can win another victory, I will definitely stay.”
More Weightlifting From the 2024 Olympics
Is Mihaela Cambei the World’s Next Weightlifting Superstar?
Loredana Toma’s Olympic Dream Died at Paris 2024
Tragedy Strikes Shi Zhiyong at 2024 Olympics
References
Draovitch P, Patel S, Marrone W, Grundstein MJ, Grant R, Virgile A, Myslinski T, Bedi A, Bradley JP, Williams RJ 3rd, Kelly B, Jones K. The Return-to-Sport Clearance Continuum Is a Novel Approach Toward Return to Sport and Performance for the Professional Athlete. Arthrosc Sports Med Rehabil. 2022 Jan 28;4(1):e93-e101. doi: 10.1016/j.asmr.2021.10.026. PMID: 35141541; PMCID: PMC8811516.
Editor’s Note: This article is an op-ed. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of BarBend or Pillar4 Media. Claims, assertions, opinions, and quotes have been sourced exclusively by the author.
Featured Image: @yks.media / Instagram
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