Weighed down by scandal

Hossein Rezazadeh claims gold

By Paul Cohen, Sydney

The giants were in town on Tuesday and the earth shook.

When the super-heavies do battle in the weightlifting arena it is bound to. Seventy stone of iron being slammed down after a successful lift sends out shuddering tremors through an auditorium.

Not that there has been has been any shortage of reverberation emanating from the art of weightlifting over the past 10 days.

The shock waves from drug scandal after drug scandal has left the sport's 104 year presence on the Olympic menu in serious jeopardy.

In the last and most revered event of the weightlifting programme, Hossein Rezazadeh of Iran took gold in the 105+kg to justly have claim to the title of world's strongest man.

Rezazadeh hoisted a world record two-lift combination of 472.5kg - about 74 stone in old money - but the sport as a whole has a heavy burden on its shoulders which has less chance of being lifted.

Expulsions

Wholesale expulsions of the Romanian and Bulgarian teams followed by appeals, threats of legal action and backtracking by the sport's administrators have dragged down the name of weightlifting.

Medallists have been among the 10 lifters so far testing positive both before and during the Games and hastily rearranged ceremonies have been plain embarrassments for the oldest of Olympic sports.

How unfortunate that the first ever female to win an Olympic gold was among those stripped of medals.

Concern

It is not as if this is the first time weightlifting has been tainted by drug cheats and the sport's federation is concerned for the future.

Talks between the International Weightlifting Federation and the International Olympic Committee have been planned for after the Games and Sam Coffa, the vice-president of the IWF, admitted he was a worried man.

"We can't pre-empt what the IOC is going to do," he said. "But unless we can show them we can take control of the situation, I would accept our place in the Olympic movement is in jeopardy." Weightlifting is a sport now rife with suspicion.

The super-heavyweight division is the glamour event and the Sydney Convention Centre was a sell-out.

But instead of the medal winners enjoying the media spotlight afterwards there was only one line of questioning from the floor at the press conference.

The lifters in attendance would not say much except to defend their clean doping records but there was a sense that defending their medals in Athens may be out of their hands.