A 16-year-old has benched three hundred and forty kilograms equipped. Three hundred and forty kilograms. That’s 749.6 pounds. It didn’t look easy, but Janik Velgos nailed this lift at a Global Powerlifting Committee (GPC) meet in Israel this week.
The -125kg Slovakian teenager’s performance was emotional. After making the lift, he fell to his knees in gratitude and embraced his father, who was clearly overjoyed for his son’s accomplishment. We won’t say that Velgos burst into tears, but it’s clear that he shed one or two — and why wouldn’t he?
Take a look at the lift below, filmed over two minutes from the stage itself.
And you can watch another angle from the crowd in the clip below.
This was a GPC Junior World Record for his weight class — in fact, he added twenty kilograms to that record, according to the GPC’s records list. It’s worth noting that before this lift, the record was 320 kilograms (705.5lb) and for comparison’s sake, the record for the 18 to 19 year age group is 190 kilograms (419lb).
Of course, that previous 320kg record was also set by Velgos, which he set barely two months ago at the GPC World Championships in the Czech Republic. That pause at the bottom must have been the longest two seconds of his life.
Three months before that, he was setting the previous world record with 310 kilograms (683.4 pounds). These are some seriously incredible leaps in strength.
Even though he’s just 16 years old, Velgos has been training for at least seven years. We found this footage of the lad squatting 50kg (110.2 pounds) for a triple in 2010.
These days he’s squatting closer to 340 kilograms.
With 7+ years of training experience at 16 years old, we think there’s a pretty good chance we’re witnessing the creation of a serious open athlete.
Featured image via Ľuboslav Velgos on YouTube.
