Georgian Weightlifter Talakhadze Breaks Two World Records
By Tea Mariamidze
Monday, September 24
Georgian weightlifter Lasha Talakhadze broke two world records on September 23 at the World Weightlifting Championships in Tbilisi by snatching 264 kg lift and in the clean and jerk – a total of 478 kg.
That is the most amount of weight anyone has ever snatched in a weight-lifting competition in recorded history.
Talakhadze is competing in the +105 kg category. He also became the champion of Georgia in this category.
The sportsman represented Georgia at the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships and originally finished second with a total of 454 kg, being declared the winner after Aleksey Lovchev failed a doping test.
At the 2016 Olympics he completed a snatch of 215 kg to break the world record of 214 kg set by Behdad Salimi, who took the record back with 216 kg, equaling the all-time highest set by Antonio Krastev of Bulgaria in 1987 and then completed a clean & jerk of 258 kg to set a new world record total of 473 kg and win the gold medal.
He set a new world record in the snatch at the 2017 European Weightlifting Championships with 217 kg, and in the process broke the all-time highest snatch.
At the 2017 World Weightlifting Championships, Talakhadze broke his own snatch record with 220 kg, and he went on to set a new world record for the total with 477 kg, also breaking the all-time highest total of Leonid Taranenko from 1988.
In 2017, the Georgian National Olympic Committee awarded him the title of Georgia's Sportsperson of the Year.
