Story Time: 2003 Worlds

I was recently watching the 2003 World Weightlifting Championships form Vancouver—a meet I actually attended as a spectator. And spectate we did. We bought tickets to literally every session, A through D. We watched weightlifting for almost 12 hours a day. The perfect vacation does exist.

That got me thinking about that trip, that World Championships in particular, and the countless other stories I’ve picked up over my 25 years in the sport. Every now and then, I’ll share some of them here. But for now, back to Vancouver.

I had been in the sport for barely two years when Worlds came to our continent, so my dad and I decided to go. I was 17 at the time. We arrived in the early evening and had just enough time to check into the hotel and hustle down to the Vancouver Convention Center to catch the start of the women’s 63kg clean & jerk.

It was a great session. Liu Xia took a shot at a huge 142.5kg clean & jerk to win the class. She made an incredible clean, only to just miss the jerk. After 20 hours of travel, that lift woke me right back up.

The next day, we got to the convention center early and stopped by the training hall. We couldn’t get in, but you could see through a small set of glass doors—and as luck would have it, Hossein Rezazadeh, the 2000 Olympic super heavyweight champion, was training right there in full view.

What I saw blew my mind.

He opened with snatch: 70x2, 120x2, 150x1, 170x1, 190x1.
Then clean & jerk: 120x2, 170x1, 220x1, 240x1.
Then front squats: 120x2, 170x2, 220x2, 270x1.

The jumps were massive. The reps were minimal. But what really stood out was how he worked. He never stood unless he was taking a lift. Between attempts, he sat in a chair that basically disappeared under him. He never loaded a single plate—coaches handled everything while he just sat and waited.

About a week later, I watched him go 207.5kg and 252.5kg to win his second world title, then take close shots at world records with 213.5kg and 263.5kg.

Speaking of the super heavyweight session—this is one I’ll never forget.

We upgraded our tickets so we could sit down on the floor, basically right next to the platform. When the supers came out for introductions, it already felt like it was going to be a big session. But what caught my attention wasn’t the lineup—it was what I saw next to the platform.

They had brought out a fifth pair of 25kg plates.

Normally, at a World Championships, you’ve got four pairs of reds in the competition set. This fifth pair didn’t even fit on the rack—they were just standing upright behind it. Were they expecting a 275kg clean & jerk? I don’t know. It didn’t happen. But I saw the plates… and I’ve always wondered if anyone else noticed.

Another lifter who had the entire crowd locked in was Hakan Yılmaz in the 94kg class.

He went a perfect 6-for-6 and totaled 180kg and 220kg for second place. But it wasn’t the numbers that stuck with people—it was how he lifted.

He’d come out, set up with plenty of time, and then just… sit there. In his start position. Staring forward for what felt like forever. Then, with under 10 seconds left, he’d slowly drag the bar up his body and rack it with elbows that looked like they barely locked. It was completely bizarre—and somehow, it worked. The whole thing was mesmerizing.

The last major memory from that World Championships was also a historic moment for women’s weightlifting.

In the women’s super heavyweight session, Ding Meiyuan—the 2000 Olympic champion—snatched 137.5kg (302 lbs). The first 300-pound snatch in women’s history. And she made it look easy.

It was one of those lifts you knew mattered the second it happened.

Up until that point, based on world records, the strongest women still hadn’t surpassed the smallest men. That lift changed the conversation. It put super heavyweight women on the same level as the lightest men—and since then, women’s records have only kept moving forward. Today, the heaviest women are matching or exceeding 60kg and even 65kg men in some lifts.

To me, Ding Meiyuan’s 137.5kg snatch is the weightlifting version of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile. Someone had to do it first to prove it was possible—and once they did, everything changed.