Alexandr Zaychikov is 2015 Weightlifting World Champion in the men’s 105kg class, and last week in Rio, he added Olympic bronze medalist to his growing resume. Now, the 24 year old lifter from Kazakhstan has entered a (seemingly friendly) game of social media one-upmanship with fellow 105kg lifter and new Olympic Champion Ruslan Nurudinov. A few days after his gold medal performance — the first Olympic weightlifting medal for an Uzbek athlete — Nurudinov posted some huge training lifts, including a 250kg rack jerk and 205kg snatch.
Now, Zaychikov has fired back with a 251kg rack jerk from training footage gathered in 2015.
It looks like Zaychikov’s jerk was done on the same platform as his teammate Ilya Ilyin‘s 250kg lift, also from 2015. No word yet on if they were lifted these weights on the same day — in which case, kudos to Zaychikov for tossing on the white fractional plates and gaining a kilo on Ilyin. That’s a training atmosphere we would have loved to seen in person.
With Ilyin serving a provisional suspension after positive doping retests from both the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, it looks like Zaychikov has assumed the role of his country’s top 105kg lifter, at least for the time being. However, due to a federation-wide ban on Kazakh lifters set to begin later this year, we won’t see Zaychikov — or any of his national teammates — in international competition until the latter half of 2017 at the earliest.
What’s the most impressive training lift you’ve seen posted on social media this year? Let us know in the comments below!
Featured image: Alexandr Zaychikov (@sasha_iwf92) on Instagram