Li Fabin, the 27 year old weightlifter from China, competes in the -61kg weight class and was expected to post some huge numbers at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games before they were postponed until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Li won the 2019 World Weightlifting Championships in Pattaya, Thailand where he set the current world record for both the snatch and total — 145kg/320lb and 318kg/701lb respectively.
Although we will have to wait until the newly scheduled Olympic Games on July 23rd through August 8th in 2021 to see him attempt it on the world’s biggest stage, Li has his sights set on a world record clean & jerk too. Check out this colossal 180kg/397lb clean & jerk that Li lifted at a Team China test event courtesy of Yilin Yang’s Instagram page below:
For context, the current world record clean & jerk is 174kg/383.6lb held by Eko Yuli Irawan of Indonesia.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-RX0TagCIx/
The clean appeared to be pretty routine for Li. The difficulty came in the jerk that seemed to throw off his balance and required him to take multiple steps forward. He was ultimately able to stabilize the lift to set a new unofficial world record clean & jerk that is a full 6kg over the current world record.
Li also successfully attempted a 138kg snatch at the Team China test event which can be seen from his Instagram page below:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Snq6aAocq/
The Team China test event really showed off the improvements they have all made in training. Li was not the only team member blowing past current world records.
Rio Olympics gold medalist Lu Xiaojun (-81kg) snatched a kilo more than the 173kg world record currently held by Egypt’s Mohamed Ihab. You can see this lift for yourself via All Things Gym’s Instagram post below. It is as smooth of a snatch as they get:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-RfyThKI-I/
And although not quite as heavy as the world record, Shi Zhiyong (-73kg) power cleaned & jerked 194kg/427.7lb, just 4kg under the current world record that he holds. Check out that lift below from his Instagram page:
Note: the power clean & jerk comes after Shi’s successful 170kg/375lb snatch attempt.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-RoLqVAGhA/
If you would like to watch the entire Team China test event, you can do so via the video titled Straight Outta Lockdown from Squat Jerk Journalist’s YouTube channel below:
We may have to wait a year to see Team China rewrite the record books at the Tokyo Olympic Games, but now we can wonder how much heavier they’ll be able to lift with an additional year of training.
Feature image via Li Fabin’s Instagram page: @lifabin61kg
