All the pizza that Mirabai Chanu is deservedly enjoying after her silver medal in Tokyo, Vasily Alekseyev would have gobbled up between two lifts.
Weightlifting is the flavour of the season in India due to Chanu’s achievement. Alekseyev, winner of the gold (+110 kg category) at the 1972 and 1976 Games, was the flavour of weightlifting. The colourful Russian remains the sport’s biggest personality.
Born in the village of Pokrovo-Shishkino, Alekseyev chopped wood as a child to help his father, a lumberjack. After taking up weightlifting, he trained at any hour of the day. He ate prodigious meals, consuming in one sitting almost as much as the Village Cooking Channel cooks for a dozen people.
To give just one example, the 6 ‘1’, 345-pound Alekseyev reportedly had 26 fried eggs and a steak the morning he won the gold at the 1976 Montreal Games. Do note that he lifted a total of 640 kg that day.
Alekseyev was also largely self-trained and delighted the press and the fans with his comments.
“Every time I see myself in the mirror I almost feel like asking myself for an autograph,” he once wrote.
“Should I listen to the coaches who are worse than me in that sport? Of course, I didn’t listen to anyone. I did everything on my own,” he once said.
Vanity without much performance is annoying and unjustifiable. Vanity backed by performance is not only understandable, it can also be entertaining. Muhammad ‘I’m The Greatest’ Ali is a case in point. Alekseyev not only won two Olympic golds, he set 80 world records and won eight world championships.
Despite his stature, Alekseyev did not have the classic V-shaped appearance of an Olympian strongman. No ripped abs and slim waist. He looked like the Fat B-----d from the Austin Powers films. A huge belly and man breasts spilled out of his trademark costume, a red one-piece like the one Pamela Anderson wore in Baywatch.
He didn’t care, beyond a point. Alekseyev just went about eating his meat and cranking out medals and records. For eight consecutive years from 1970-78, he did not lose once. In Montreal, he hoisted an unprecedented 255kg for his medal-winning lift in the clean and jerk event. With the 185kg he hauled in the now defunct clean and press category, he lifted a total of 35kg more than the silver medallist, Gerd Bonk of East Germany.
For perspective, Hou Zhihui of China, the gold medallist in Chanu’s category (women’s 49kg), lifted 8kg more than the Indian.
Vasily Alekseyev, 1972. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
Naturally, there were doubts if Alekseyev was juiced on steroids. The suspicions grew strong in Montreal, when he was late for a pre-Games physical. It was the first time the Olympics had dope-testing. Ultimately, he did pass the test.
“I was lifting those weights without any drugs,” Alekseyev declared in a documentary.
He once spoke in some detail about his approach in Sports Illustrated magazine. He said he simply lifted more and trained more than his rivals.
“The difference between my methods and others is great,” he said. “What is mainly different is that I train more often and I lift more weights than others. I never know when I will train. Sometimes deep in the night, sometimes in the morning. Sometimes several times a day, sometimes not at all. I never repeat myself. Only I understand what is right for me. I have never had a coach. I know my own possibilities best. No coach knows them. Coaches grow old and they have old ideas.”
Alekseyev grew old too. The 1980 Moscow Olympics were to be his glorious sunset. He was going for a hat-trick of golds, in front of his home audience. But he was 38, and had become even more insistent about training his way. The world and form had passed him by. Thrice, he tried to lift 180 kg. Thrice he failed. The thrill of this sport is to see a lifter, knees trembling, teeth bared, get the weight off their chest, like a heroic pilot in a movie giving his all on a short runway, pulling the lever and getting the plane off the ground and out of enemy territory. Alekseyev was a master of such bold manoeuvres. Not this time. He was eliminated.
Afterwards, the same man who detested coaches had a brief but successful coaching career. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, Alekseyev guided the Unified Team, as the former Soviet Union contingent was called, to ten medals. And one of his sons, Dmitry, became a national level lifter.
In his spare time, Alekseyev enjoyed quiet pursuits, such as reading and music. According to his obituary in the New York Times, Alekseyev once said in an interview, “Best of all, I like reading. At the moment, I’m in the middle of an Agatha Christie. It’s fascinating.”
Alekseyev died in 2011, aged 69, of heart disease. The butler didn’t do it. The steak and eggs probably did. But who cares. He lived long enough and achieved great things.
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