You probably won't find any photos of your latest super hero powerlifter in here as these photos are primarily from the 1980's. You will find photos of some great lifters, great people, and great action. Many photos are of the "big men" of that era.
To reduce loading time, the photos are installed on multiple pages. There is a link at the bottom of each page. The individual pages can be requested from the photos page.
Photos of the meet program cover and tickets to this meet are in the miscellaneous photos segment.
The meet was held in a hotel (Green - something) near Reunion arena. I recall checking in and seeing a lot of broken glass and mirrors in the elevator lobby. When I asked about it at the desk, they non-challantly mentioned there had been a big shoot-out in the lobby earlier that day when an armored car came by to pickup some money.
The large scoreboard you see in the background of several of the photos was reported by Powerlifting USA to be the largest scoreboard ever used for a powerlifting meet. You might want to compare it to the huge board in the 1975 World Olympic Championships photo in this collection.
The first two are of Lee Moran a super-heavy. He had recently squatted a 1003. He had recently dropped a 1000+ squat attempt in a meet due to a spin lock collar slipping off. You can read about that in the Weightlifting Stories segment of the Weight Lifting Section. The meet director at the World's, Chip McCain, asked me to supply a pair of our Okie Grip barbell collars to be used if he were to make such an attempt here. They take up less room on the bar and 1000 pounds takes a lot of space, plus they stick on tighter than spin-locks (so much for the commercial, now on with the story.) The photo of him setting up is with 903. I once opened with a 903. At the "weigh in" they asked me for my opening attempt and I thought they were asking what time it was : )
Digging out my old copies of PLUSA I see he missed the 903. He did get his first two at 832 and 881 and go on to win with a 2154 total.
That's Brian Smith from London England in the red jacket behind Lee. Brian came over to act as the platform manager at the big meets back then. He did an awesome job of being prepared for the lifters and dealing with them in extreme circumstances when they weren't always at their friendliest. He wore the shades to keep the glare from all the camera flashes from distracting him. He was always great. The guy spotting at the right edge of the picture in the red shirt is Mike. I met him earlier at the Sr. Nationals in 83 and can't remember his last name. He was from some distance away and we talked quite a while.
In the first photo he is near the bottom of his squat. The 5 man spot team is poised and ready. Brian has his ever present shades on to avoid being distracted by camera flashes.
Brian Smith Checking the Load brian.jpg 40K bytes The next two photos come from the 1978 World Olympic Lifting Championships in Gettysburg Pennsylvania. I flew to Harrisburg, rented a car, and drove to Gettysburg. On the way I drove past the nuclear plant reactor at Three-Mile Island shortly before it was to become very famous. I recall seeing the huge hyperbolic shaped cooling towers and stopping to take some photos that did not come out due to the steam vapor hiding the towers from view.
I also had the opportunity to tour the battlefield site at Gettysburg for my first time, I've since been back twice. Its a large park full of monuments you can drive through and stop and get out to approach the larger ones. Eventually you wind up in the cemetery and see the endless rows of flat headstones and begin to understand the terrible battle which took place there. Its a good experience I would recommend to anyone who has the opportunity.
At the meet, I was able to personally visit with the legendary Paul Anderson. Earlier, I had sent him a pair of our Okie Grip barbell collars and he had sent me some of his training manuals and photos. I was very inspired by him and his feats of strength when I was growing up. My photo of him signing autographs at this meet shows him to still have massive arms beyond those of mortal men.
Photos of the meet program cover and tickets to this meet are in the miscellaneous photos segment.
This next photo shows the super-heavy weights getting ready for the "A Session". The lifters were divided into two groups by qualifying totals and the "B Session had lifted earlier". Those now on the stand were the strongest of the "Big Men." The platform itself is pretty incredible. You might want to compare it to the 84 World Powerlifting Championship photos (earlier on this page) which had the largest scoreboard ever at a powerlifting meet. It was dwarfed at this 1978 World Olympic Championship Meet. Olympic style lifting being an Olympic event and seriously contested world wide for many years gives the championship meets quite a tradition. They had an incredible platform, scoreboard, flowers, collection of international flags, national anthems, dignitaries, and many famous lifters from the past (including Paul Anderson in the prior photo). ABC was there with major coverage. They had their small commentator (Jim McKay), who looked quite humorous up along side some of these huge individuals, and Bruce Wilhelm as color commentator. Bruce had wrestled here at Oklahoma State in the late 1960's and went on to be the only U.S. lifter to be anywhere near competitive with the rest of the world and he did it as a super-heavy. He finish 5th at the Montreal Olympics in 76. I visited with Bruce a while at this meet and we were able to talk several other times at large power lifting meets in the 1980's.
A short story about the flowers on the platform, I recall their being a couple of huge bouquets of flowers adding to the grandness of the event. One of the international lifters who went into a wild frenzy before he lifted was storming around the platform screaming and jumping in the air. He grabbed the flowers and started eating them. The crowd went wild in cheering him on.
At the 76 Olympics the huge Russian Vassily Alexeyev had hoisted 255 kg (561 pounds) in the clean and jerk. There were rumors he would try 600 here. That is him in the platform photo 4th from the right, next to the lifter in the yellow top. Immediately on Alexeyev's right is Sultan Rakhmanov one of the "Russian's in Waiting" for a shot at being the national hero after Alexeyev. During this meet Alexeyev hurt his hip and I only remember him lifting in one other meet afterwards and he had not fully recovered. This meet was the passing of the crown to the next generation.
The lifters on the far right of the photo in the blue warm-ups are Jerry Hanna and Tom Stock the USA contingent in the super-heavy class.
Through my lifting experiences, our business, and being involved in many areas of strength sports I have had the opportunity to meet many "big men" including Bruce Wilhelm (Olympic lifter), Rosie Greer (football), JJ, Jimmy Jackson, (collegiate and Olympic wrestler), Bill Kazmier (powerlifter), John Gamble (powerlifter, strength coach), Terry Todd (early day powerlifter), Hugh Cassidy (early day powerlifter), Bill Dunn (past strength coach at Virginia), Bruno Pauletto (thrower, strength coach, and strength equipment supplier), Bruce Baumgartner (Olympic freestyle wrestler), Edward Burke (Olympic hammer thrower), Lou Ferrigno (bodybuilder and Incredible Hulk), and several others. I myself competed as a super-heavy powerlifter. I say this to point out that I have met many of the men considered to be incredibly big by the standards of the world. None of those experiences, before or since this meet, prepared me for seeing Leonoid Zhabotinsky. He was the Russian that had preceded Alexeyev and won the Tokyo (1964) and Mexico City (1968) Olympics. He had weighed in at 359 in Mexico City and was said to now be about 425 pounds in good shape on a 7 foot 4 inch frame. That is him on the platform in the dark blazer as the second official from the left. Look at how he dwarfs all these other huge men on the platform! He was a side judge in part of the earlier competition. I recall him sitting on a folding chair and the back of the chair barely reaching to the top of his slacks. There was an aisle down which people were walking 3 abreast in front of me. When he came by there was only room for him. I have never imagined a human of this size. I spoke of this later to my wrestling friend JJ, himself about 6 foot 7 in. and 340 pounds. He told me of how stunned he was when he meet Andre the Giant (7 ft 4 in and 500 pounds). JJ had similarly met a man bigger than even he could imagine and never forgot it, nor shall I.
An aside story about JJ, on his way to wrestle as a super-heavy in the Montreal Olympics in 76 (I helped him some with his weight training as he prepared), some idiot grabbed his billfold and ran in an airport. I will try to find the news clips and post that story later. Not a brilliant idea!
I dug out the program, I still have a lot of programs from the old major meets, and found this session began at 8 p.m. Sunday October 8th 1978. So much for the chatting, here's the photo of the platform for the 1978 Olympic World's with the "big men" on it.
The platform photo above was shot by me from the "cheap seats" with a small pocket 110 camera 17 years ago. I recently used the fractile technology described earlier to blow it up to a respectable size and I think it came out quite well.
