Jesus Olivares is arguably the strongest powerlifter in the world. He has totalled raw more than anyone else in the world and his performance has been skyrocketing recently. This class was clearly his to lose.
Olivares dominated from the very first squat, opening 45kg ahead of his nearest competitor and moving up to 455kg for his second. Unchallenged, he left it there but further down the field, Mehdi Mafigholami of Iran squatted 387.5kg for a masters 1 world record and he took the silver medal on bodyweight from Switzerland's Sean Koch.
Ilyas Boughalem of Algeria placed second last year and he let us know on the platform that he had broken the bench world record at 8 successive world championships but, unfortunately, his streak came to an end when he missed 292kg for his third. Still, he took the bench gold.
Olivares gave us a fright when he missed his opening bench, clipping the rack on the way up. He hit 250kg on his second though and that was enough for the silver medal with the bronze going to Dmytro Vovk of Ukraine for 247.5kg
At sub-total, Cenk Koçak of Turkey was 10kg ahead of junior world champion, Temur Samkharadze of Georgia. He extended his lead even more with his 370kg opening pull but that was his only successful deadlift and Samkharadze moved past with 382.5kg for his final lift.
Olivares entertained the crowd with a 410.5kg world record attempt but it wasn't quite there. Still, he picked up his third world title.
Jesus Olivares USA 1080kg
Temur Samkharadze GEO 982.5kg
Cenk Koçak TUR 980kg
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