This is one beautiful lift.
Thirty-year-old Chinese weightlifter Zhang Jie hasn’t competed on the international stage in years, but the guy is maintaining some seriously elite level strength. Zhang has only ever competed as a -62kg athlete and while we believe he trains somewhere around the 65 to 68 kilogram mark, this is 180-kilogram clean & jerk is still an absolutely phenomenal lift. This is a good 2.75 times his bodyweight, and it went remarkably smoothly. Take a look.
[How many people have clean & jerked triple bodyweight? Just these six game-changing athletes.]
How does this measure up to his competition lifts? He is an extraordinarily successful athlete, having taken home gold medals in the 2007 Junior World Weightlifting Championships, three Asian Weightlifting Championships, one Asian Games, and the 2011 Weightlifting World Championships.
He shares the title of -62kg WWC world champion with athletes like Naim Süleymanoğlu and Halil Mutlu, having made a 176-kilogram clean & jerk at the 2011 championships in Paris.
Love his form? Not a fan of blurry videos? Check out this super slow-mo footage of Zhang hitting a 175-kilogram clean & jerk.
The guy does appear to lose strength when he cuts to competition size, so we may never see him hit 180kg on stage — not if he continues competing at -62kg, anyway. And of course, the fact that China is in the middle of a one-year ban from international competition. But a couple of weeks ago, we saw footage of him allegedly hitting a 156-kilogram snatch, two kilograms over the world record for his weight class.
[Read more: The 10 heaviest snatches ever caught on film.]
So we have a feeling China will find a way to get him back on the international stage after their ban is over.
Featured image via @awesome_weightlifting on Instagram.
