The Big EasyThe superheavies were in the house, and a Russian, Andrei Chemerkin, hoisted the goldby Michael Bamberger
The big boys—an even dozen of them, mostly in the 290-to-407-pound range—did not slip in unnoticed, of course. They sashayed across the platform, knowing they were on display, like horses in a post parade at the racetrack. Their bellies were a half step ahead of their feet, their thighs attached from kneecap on up. And when the merry witnesses first glimpsed the lifters yesterday in a basement hall of the Georgia World Congress Center, they went berserk. The superheavyweights had moved in for the final, and they were the perfect antidote for a paying public that had apparently overindulged on Kerri Strug and all the other gravity-defying athletes in these Games. The monster trucks had arrived.
Chemerkin
set a world record of 573 pounds in the clean and jerk.
photograph by
The most monstrous of them was an American, Mark Henry, an amiable Texan with a beard and an earring and a 407-pound body, so naturally he will soon embark on a professional "wrestling" career. May he have a long and prosperous one. He's a charismatic man, and the crowd roared for his successful lifts and moaned sympathetically at his misses. The experts in this sport say that until Henry can snatch his own body weight, he's not going to be a factor in international heavyweight weightlifting. Yesterday he finished 14th, behind four lifters from the morning session. He snatched 3853/4 pounds and jerked 446-1/4 pounds. If you wish to demean those results, you're on your own.
The competition belonged to Ronny Weller, a German known in some circles as the Slab, and to Andrei Chemerkin, a Russian. It was supposed to belong to Aleksandr Kurlovich, the 34-year-old Belarussian trying to win his third consecutive gold medal. But Kurlovich was good snatch, no jerk yesterday, and he finished fifth.
The Slab prepared for his lifts to the curious selection of music that filled the hall—Brahms, Elvis, Springsteen. By the Slab's final lift, the music—or something—had moved him. Early on, he was a stoic. By his final jerk lift, 562 pounds, he was practically an exhibitionist. He had set a world record and celebrated by taking off his sneakers and heaving them toward the delirious fans. He could taste the gold.
But the Russian had last licks. When the announcer said, "Loaders, load 260 kilograms on the bar," there was the sort of whooping that brought to mind the audiences of the late Arsenio Hall Show. The 260 was five more kilograms than Weller had just heaved—573 pounds. Ouch!
He got it up, Chemerkin did, his belly shaking, his lips curled in smile. He had set a world record and won a gold medal, too, by coupling his record jerk with his 435-1/2-pound snatch. Silver for the Slab. A bronze for an Australian, Stefan Botev. The Russian anthem was played, and for a moment the festive crowd turned earnest. They gave Chemerkin a standing ovation. They knew, in the end, that this was no monster-truck pull. It was the Olympics, and they had seen history.
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SI Olympic Dailies
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