From: pa0q+@andrew.cmu.edu (Phil Andrews)
Newsgroups: misc.fitness
Subject: Re: olympic and powerlifting questions
Date: 23 Jul 92 15:55:00 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA


>A few weekends ago, Wide World of Sports had the world olympic lifting
>championships taped last fall in Germany. Also, considering that
>the Olympics are coming up, I had some questions. Pardon my ignorance,
>but:

>1. Given the general popularity of weight training, how will
>   the USA team do in Olympic lifting?? On Wide World of Sports, the top 
>   contenders were Russian, German & Korean for the superheavyweight 
>   class - they didn't even cover our guy - he was something like 
>   10th. Is it just that powerlifting is more popular?

In general Olympic lifting is more popular than powerlfting only in
countries where the participants don't have a choice; they are forced to
choose Olympic lifting to enhance the prestige of their (usually eastern
block) nation. Some countries do have a tradition of Olympic lifting
from the days when it was the only game in town (powerlifting is
relatively recent, the pesent 3 lifts were only standardized in the
'60s). The domination of the Eastern block is much greater than is
normally evidenced at the Olympics where only 1 competitor per country
per weight class is normally entered by the stronger teams. The Russians
could probably field close to a 100 lifters better than the best U.S.
lifter in most weight classes. With the breakdown of communist control
many Eastern block countries have begun fielding powerlifting teams.
Some of these have done very well considering their recent genesis.


>2. What is the USA's international standing in powerlifting?

It dominates, almost completely. The only other team ever to win a World
championship was (if memory serves me) Great Britain in 1976 in York,
Pa. GB has a much weaker team, nowadays (in the drug tested contests,
stronger in non-drug testing). Note that this need not imply that
everyone lifting in the non-tested contests takes drugs, many of the
lifters (some of whom I know) just got fed up with the officialdom in
the older organizations. I can see their point; technically a surprise
test could ban me for life for taking an Apsirin (or preparation H, or
almost anything else). Russia is improving rapidly, but still well
behind the U.S., South Africa is surprisingly strong.

>3. What is the status of getting powerlifting into the Olympics?

The IPF is trying to get into the Olympics. Personally I feel this is a
mistake. As a hammer-thrower turned powerlifter the lack of hypocrisy in
powerlifting regarding drug taking is very refreshing. Those who take
drugs compete in non-tested meets, many who don't, lift in organizations
that test. There is only one Olympics and the emphasis is on evasion of
drug tests/avoiding consequences of positive tests. I've seen the claim
by a Russion sports coach that they can get anyone in the world through
a drug test with 24 hours notice using mechanical blood filtration.
Recent documents from East Germany show that all of their top athletes
were taking drugs (as we were all pretty sure, anyway), which must be
pretty annoying to Randy Barnes of the U.S. who was probably a good hope
for a gold in the shot putt if he wasn't serving a drug suspension. 

-Phil Andrews
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