On August 21, Georgian weightlifter Lasha Talakhadze shared a pre-Olympics training video of himself comfortably snatching 225kg (495 pounds), which would have been an official all-time world record during his preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The 27-year-old is the only known weightlifter in history to snatch four reds (each red plate weighing 25kg) multiple times, according to BarBend. This isn’t the only time Talakhadze has demonstrated his awesome strength in a training video. In a video posted after the European Weightlifting Competition (where he scored a world record clean and jerk), Talakhadze snatched 225kg(495 pounds) and a 270kg ( 594 pound) clean and jerk.
BarBend said both lifts were the heaviest caught on film:
To date, both of those lifts are the all-time heaviest snatch and clean & jerk caught on film, respectively. It’s not uncommon for high-level weightlifters to post big training lifts after a competition has wrapped up, but few can say they’ve released footage of lifts that, a decade ago, were thought to be nearly unreachable.
The champion of the Rio 2016 and 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games is a leading contender for the title of greatest weightlifter of all time. After scoring three world records in 2020 Tokyo Olympics, many called him the strongest man in the world. The Standard, for example, ran the following headline: “Talakhadze is strongest man in the world.”
This impressive weightlifter was inspired to get into weightlifting by his father. “All I knew as a child about weightlifting was that my father did the sport. I did my first workout with him and he introduced me to Giorgi Asanidze — a great athlete and my future trainer,” Talakhadze said in a 2020 interview with Ukranian weightlifter and former Olympian Oleksiy Torokhtiy.
The Georgian aspires to achieve the legendary, as-of-yet unattained 500kg (~1,100 pound) total, which will have to include around 225 kg. Even if he achieves it, he will set his sights on greater milestones. In the interview mentioned earlier, he said, “If I reach 500kg mark, then I will immediately have a new target of 505kg, 510kg, etc.”
