Lasha Talakhadze winning his first Olympic gold medal in 2016. / MojNews
Lasha Talakhadze is the GOAT of weightlifting. For the last decade, he’s dominated the unlimited weight class with no true competition, repeatedly breaking his own world records. The Georgian giant won his record-tying third Olympic gold medal at the Paris Olympics. We look at five things that make him stand alone in the history of competitive weightlifting.
LASHA TALAKHADZE IS HUGE.
The Georgian giant is massive. He stands 6’6″ [197 cm.] and weighs just over 400 pounds [183 kg.]. Even amongst his fellow big men, he’s the biggest. At the 2020 Olympics, Talakhadze outweighed the 6’6″ super-heavy silver medalist by 32 pounds and the 6’3″ bronze medalist by a whopping 88 pounds.
HE’S A GEORGIAN (THE COUNTRY).
Lasha Talakhadze is from the small transcontinental country (Eastern Europe and Western Asia) of Georgia, home to a little more than four million citizens. (By comparison, the American state of Georgia has a population of 11 million.) On October 2, 1993, he was born in Tbilis, the country’s capital. Formerly part of the Soviet Union, Georgia first competed in the Olympics as an independent nation in 1994. Georgians have won 13 Olympic gold medals. Ten of those were won by ten different athletes, all competing in judo or wrestling.
The other three were won by one man, Lasha Talakhadze, in weightlifting in 2016 and 2020 and 2024. “I had offers to get citizenship of another country,” Talakhadze said. “At first, when I received such an offer, it went in one ear and out the other because no matter what was offered, it was unacceptable to me. I am still like that, the main thing is to sing the Georgian national anthem [atop the winners’ platform].” He is the GOAT of Georgian athletes.
WEIGHTLIFTING RUNS IN THE TALAKHADZE FAMILY.
“As a child, all I knew about weightlifting was that my father did the sport,” Lasha Talakhadze said. “I did my first workout with him, and he introduced me to Giorgi Asanidze, a great athlete and my future trainer.” His father, Koba Talakhadze, was a competitive weightlifter in the 1990s.
LASHA TALAKHADZE HAS BROKE A LOT OF RECORDS.
Throughout his career, Lasha Talakhadze has set 26 world records, repeatedly breaking his own marks for the clean and jerk, the snatch, and the total. This tally was only increased when the International Weightlifting Federation restructured the weight classes in 2018, raising the bar on the unlimited division from 105+ kg. to 109+ kg., which led Talakhadze to set and break more all-time marks.
His best ever lifts, and the all-time weightlifting records in any division, were set at the 2021 World Weightlifting Championships:
SNATCH: 225 kg. (496 lbs.)
CLEAN AND JERK: 267 kg. (588.6 lbs.)
TOTAL: 492 kg. (1084.7 lbs.)
For perspective, the previous record total, which Talakhadze broke for the first time in 2019, was 476 kg. (set by the Soviet Union’s Leonid Taranenko) and had stood for an incredible 31 years, seemingly unreachable. Three years ago, when he was breaking his own records annually, it seemed Lasha Talakhadze might hit the mythical 500 kg. total. However, he hasn’t come close to breaking his records since then, so his hitting the 500 mark is no longer a thing. But he’s pushed the numbers so high, how long will his records remain unbroken? Another 31 years?
2024 WAS LIKELY HIS FINAL OLYMPICS.
Of course, Lasha Talakhadze holds the snatch, clean and jerk, and total Olympic records, as well. He is only the fifth weightlifter in history to win a gold medal in three Olympic games, and he’s the first super-heavyweight to do so. Looking forward four years, no weightlifter has won Olympic gold four times. (Five weightlifters have medaled four times, including Pyrros Dimas, who is also one of the five with three gold medals.) Will Talakhadze compete in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles in a quest to become the first person in Olympic history to win a gold medal in weightlifting four times?
It seems unlikely. Father Time is undefeated. Talakhadze withdrew from the European Championships earlier in 2024 because of a knee injury. In 2022, he was diagnosed with a minor heart irregularity and encouraged to lose weight. He is married with three daughters and health concerns may hasten his retirement. What’s more, if he did return in 2028, he may no longer be the world’s strongest weightlifter. He dominated in 2020, winning the Olympics by a ridiculous 47 kg. However, by comparison, he only eked by in 2024, winning by 3 kg. (He missed his final snatch and did not take his final clean and jerk.) A study revealed that the peak strength age for elite weightlifting is, on average, 26. Talakhadze’s strength probably peaked at 27 in 2021. He’s now 30. At the Los Angeles Olympics, he would be 34, a senior citizen by weightlifting standards.
But he is the GOAT of weightlifting, and GOATs are known to do GOAT things. The Georgian weightlifting president said: “Should we all be blessed with Lasha’s fourth Olympic gold medal, he would definitely get the title of all-time best. It is my dream for him.” So…maybe. For now, we salute Lasha Talakhadze, who won his third Olympic gold medal by once again taking more weight from the floor to overhead than any other human on the planet.
