OLYMPIC HISTORY

Five years after the first weightlifting championships were held, the sport became one of those to join the Olympic Games from its modern outset in Athens. It was a much simpler affair in those days and the law of the jungle ruled; there were no weight classes - the biggest lift won.

By 1932, there were five classes and the three recognised lifts were the snatch, the clean-and-jerk and the press. The latter was dropped after the 1972 Games in Munich. In 1992, because of the crisis of drug-taking in the sport, the authorities changed the weight classes so that the record book could be started anew. That will happen again in Sydney, however, when the men lift in eight wholly new weight divisions. The biggest break from the past, however, will be the introduction of women lifters to the Olympic Games.

Subtle changes in weight classes mean that successive victories have rarely been achieved in precisely the same event. However, turning a blind eye to specific weights, two Greek lifters, Pyrros Dimas and Akakios Kakhiasvilis, will try to do what few lifters have done before then when they pursue their third successive gold medals in Sydney.

The first to achieve that was Tamio Kono, of Japan, in three different classes in 1952, 1956 and 1960. Kono, sickly in childhood, became "Mr World" in 1954 and was voted "Mr Universe" in 1955 and 1957.

More recently, the most famous three-in-a-row came from Naim Suleymanoglu, a 5ft Bulgarian competing for Turkey, in the featherweight class in 1988, 1992 and 1996.

Suleymanoglu was born to peasant parents in Ptichar, a mountain village in a region of Bulgaria that is home to a large population of ethnic Turks. At 14 he came within 6lb of breaking the world record for combined lifts, at 15 he set a world lifting record, and by 16 became only the second lifter to hoist three times his own bodyweight.

Politics and racial hatred then intervened as Bulgaria started to crack down on its ethnic minorities. Suleymanoglu was approached by Bulgarian defectors to Turkey to join them there but the lifter at first refused. The provocations he suffered later, however, caused him to escape the Bulgaria team through a toilet window during the 1986 world championships in Melbourne and seek asylum at the Turkish embassy in Australia. On the eve of the Seoul Olympics, Bulgaria granted a waiver for the lifter to change nationality on receipt of $1 million from the Turkish Government. All three of his titles were therefore won for Turkey.

Like Suleymanoglu, Dimas escaped a harsh regime to take up Greek citizenship. A Albanian by birth, Dimas himself is no stranger to controversy. His 1992 light heavyweight title came in one of the two closest Olympic lifting finals in history. Three men lifted a total of 370kg in two lifts. Dimas got the decision on two grounds; he was lighter than one lifter and was first to reach his total score, a rule applied for the first time that year. Second came Krzysztof, of Poland, while the heaviest man, Ibragim Samadov, the Chechen competing for the unified team of former Soviet republics, stood on the winner's rostrum in the bronze-medal position. Once there, however, Samadov let the medal fall to the floor and walked away in protest. He was banned for life by the International Weightlifting Federation.

The coach of Samadov's team was one Vassily Alexseyev, winner of the super heavyweight titles in 1972 and 1976 and one of the most famous lifters in history, not least because of the ease with which he dominated the lifting world during the 1970s, setting 79 world records in eight years of successive victories, and because of his physical size; 345lb at the time he won his second title, one particularly famous meal of his - 26 fried eggs and a steak - doubtless contributed to that weighty total.

Not all who win gold glister, however. In 1948, Stanley Stanczyk won the light heavyweight title but the man he beat into the silver medal became much more famous; his US team-mate, Harold Sakata, played Oddjob in Goldfinger alongside Sean Connery as James Bond.

Among women in Sydney, China, with a poor record in failed drugs tests, is expected to win every title. Among those who might cause upset is Maria Takacs, of Hungary.