Olympic Games Fool’s Gold: Vindication Day!

For Decades Strength Sports Twisted Themselves Into Pretzels

For decades bodybuilding and powerlifting twisted themselves into pretzels seeking Olympic Games recognition.

Meet the break-dancing TV hustler above: Olympic Games gold medal winner?

The following tale is often dismissed as the powerlifting equivalent of an urban legend. This powerlifting horror story is based on the account of one man, a man I knew, admired, and believed. The story takes place at the 1968 Olympic Games held in Mexico City. Since everyone involved is dead, we shall never know the real truth.

The 1968 Powerlifting Olympic Legend

The crux of the tale is that, in conjunction with the weightlifting that took place at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, the International Weightlifting Federation, the weightlifting governing body recognized within the Olympic world, entertained and then accepted powerlifting as a new Olympic sport.

What!

Then, according to iron icon Bill Starr, a man in a position to know since he was there, Bob Hoffman, the “father of American weightlifting,” began buttonholing IWF executive board members and got them to reverse the recognition of powerlifting as an Olympic sport. Starr’s famous quote: “For 30 minutes powerlifting was an Olympic sport!”

That story should be treated as strength-culture oral history, not as an independently verified IOC record. I believed Bill Starr. I still believe Bill Starr. But belief, even informed belief, is not the same thing as a surviving official minute sheet.

Hoffman, Weider, and the Fatherhood of Strength Sports

Hoffman, the sugar daddy of American Olympic weightlifting, had a multiplicity of reasons for his alleged action. Powerlifting was problematic for Bob. First, if powerlifting became an Olympic sport, he would have to become the father of American powerlifting. That meant funding two squads of American lifters.

Hoffman footed the travel bill — air, hotel, per diem — for USA weightlifters heading to the world championships or the Olympic Games. If he had to do the same for the powerlifters, his outlay would double. The alternative was, for Bob, too horrible to contemplate.

Hoffman was impaled on the horns of a strength dilemma. If Bob did not step up and offer to fund USA powerlifter travel expenses to world championships and the Olympic Games, he would create an opening for his demonic foe, Joe Weider.

Joe “trainer of champions” Weider was ready, willing, and quite able to step up and foot the bill for American powerlifting team travel expenses. This would enable Joe Weider to become the father of American powerlifting. That was unacceptable to the father of American weightlifting.

Joe Weider had already developed strong friendships with the elite LA powerlifters operating out of Bill “Peanuts” West’s Westside Barbell Club. Luminaries included George Frenn, Pat Casey, Hal Connelly, Steve Merjanian, Len Ingro, et al. Weider had the money and expressed an inclination and willingness to become the father of American powerlifting. Hoffman would lose his mind if somehow his archnemesis got control of the sister strength sport.

What if Weider-backed powerlifters won more medals than Hoffman-backed American weightlifters at the world championships or Olympic Games? That was a totally unacceptable scenario.

Another problem: there was a widely held belief among the weightlifting intelligentsia that the new sport of powerlifting was siphoning off a goodly portion of American weightlifting talent.

We now understand that the elite weightlifter and the elite powerlifter are two dramatically different animals. There have been no men who dominated both Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting at the highest modern level over the intervening decades. The Olympic lifter is as different from a powerlifter as a soccer forward is from an NFL pulling guard. Still, in 1968 the consensus was that American powerlifting success would be at American weightlifting’s expense.

The Olympic Fantasy Turns Radioactive

Midwest power bar for squats, deadlifts, and bench press.

For these reasons, Hoffman allegedly submarined powerlifting in 1968. The 1970s would bring a rash of steroid scandals that changed everything, insofar as any possibility of powerlifting’s inclusion into the Olympic Games.

When drug scandals broke, the IOC and the larger Olympic world looked hard at “at-risk” sports, sports in which performance-enhancing drugs provided an obvious competitive advantage. PEDs are of far greater benefit to a shot-putter than to a gymnast or an equestrian rider. Powerlifting became radioactive.

Once the first wave of steroid scandals broke in the 1970s and then continued unabated into the 1980s, powerlifting’s chances of Games inclusion evaporated. Yet within the powerlifting community, the Olympic fantasy was falsely, or perhaps naïvely, presented to faithful members as the ultimate goal.

Getting powerlifting into the Olympics was the eternal priority. Everything should revolve around attaining Olympic inclusion.

The lofty goal would be attained by demonstrating that powerlifting could and would become a “clean” sport, as drug-free as 10-meter diving or dressage. There would be lots of out-of-competition testing and plenty of drug suspensions until all the bad apples were purged. Powerlifting would become so pure that the IOC elite would say, “Powerlifting is so pure and clean, so cool and popular, that it deserves to be in the Olympic Games!”

In another kiss-up move, the IPF and its American sister affiliate altered weight classes in a way many powerlifters interpreted as chasing international and Olympic respectability. The IWF had created new world records by establishing new weight classes, seeking a “clean slate,” the commencement of a new, pure, drug-free era of weightlifting, one that would differentiate modern weightlifting from those dirty old — amazing, incredible, god-like — Bulgarian and Russian lifters of the 1980s.

The powerlifting elite solemnly intoned, “Well hell, if we want to lift in the Olympics, we need to mimic the IWF weight-class changes. We too will cleanse our books. This will be our year zero.”

I wrote an article at the time pointing out that the IOC was hardly looking to include another at-risk lifting sport in the Olympic Games. Quite the opposite: the goal was to limit at-risk sports and events, toss some of them out, and replace them with more popular, viewer-friendly, lower-risk sports. Sport had become a highly elastic definition. Promoters wanted events popular with the television viewing public. They wanted ratings. Period.

Does anyone really think the Olympic Games viewing public craves Olympic weightlifting or powerlifting? In America, neither sport has ever been a mainstream spectator juggernaut at the national championship level.

Breaking Becomes the Vindication

I wrote an article in the 1980s saying that the then-new craze of break dancing stood a better chance of getting into the Olympics than powerlifting.

This brought howls of outrage. My critique was callous and beyond ridiculous! Powerlifting was destined for the Olympics, just you wait and see! You would have thought I had sucker-punched the 90-year-old queen of England.

The blowback was severe. I really hit a nerve. The Olympics were really important to these people; they truly believed that in the not-too-distant future they would be competing at the Olympic Games, winning medals — “USA! USA!” — and afterward being interviewed on national television.

The IOC decision happened on December 7, 2020. I became aware of it on December 10. Breaking, the Olympic name for competitive break dancing, had been officially included in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing were also approved for Paris 2024.

That was my vindication day.

Powerlifting never got the call. Breaking did.

Breaking actually debuted at Paris 2024. It is not listed on the LA28 Olympic sports plan, but that does not dilute the joke or the point. The thing that outraged the powerlifting faithful in the 1980s had already happened. Breaking got in. Powerlifting did not.

I have a long memory. As the old line goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. Vindication after 35 years is pretty damned cold vindication. Yet vindication nonetheless.

Bodybuilding’s Olympic Mirage

Speaking of Joe Weider: bodybuilding and the Weider brothers had their own Olympic mirage evaporate.

Ben and Joe Weider had a dream of seeing bodybuilding in the Olympics. Ben, the elder, was an imperious sort, drawn to power, governance, and classical orthodoxy. Rich and cultured, a proud Canuck, Ben was a major collector of Napoleonic antiques and artifacts.

He envisioned the bodybuilding Olympic champion being crowned in the Games final event: the recognition of the world’s most perfectly constructed male and female, the perfect humans. This would be the brothers’ ultimate legacy.

IRON COMPANY solid rubber bumper plates with dead bounce.

This ultimate dream was pursued full-bore. As a top-gun writer for Muscle & Fitness — 83 feature articles — I had a ringside seat when the mighty Weider Empire was at its peak, this in the 1990s, before the internet revolution destroyed the magazine business.

So serious were the Weider brothers about their Olympic dream that they feted, lured, and beguiled Juan Antonio Samaranch to several Mr. Olympia competitions. Samaranch was a big deal: the IOC president from 1980 to 2001. He spent a lot of time in and around Atlanta leading up to the 1996 Olympic Games.

For two years in a row, the Olympia, the biggest bodybuilding competition in the world, was purposefully held in Atlanta so the Weiders might entice Samaranch, who had temporary residence in Atlanta, to attend. The brothers wined and dined the IOC boss. They, in turn, were teased and tempted, led on, seduced. Ultimately, predictably, it failed.

In hindsight, it felt like a cynical ploy on the part of the IOC boss, the wired insider looking to profit and party off the rich brothers’ obsession. Samaranch knew from the first time he heard it proposed that bodybuilding would never be an Olympic Games event. He knew there was no chance in hell that was ever going to happen. He knew that and happily accepted the brothers’ lavish enticements.

The Weider brothers were no one’s fools. These men stripped the bark off business competitors. They deservedly seized control of bodybuilding and bettered it, taking it to stratospheric levels of popularity. The Olympics seemed more Ben’s dream than Joe’s. Regardless, the full weight and might of the Weider empire were behind this full-court press effort to get bodybuilding into the Olympic Games.

And they failed.

The Olympics Then and Now

By now I assume the powerlifting powers that be have cut loose their great white whale, the Olympic fantasy, once and for all. Illusions and delusions are neither healthy nor sane. Besides, the modern Olympic Games bear little resemblance to the epic, once-every-four-years clash of civilizations they once were.

There was a time when the Olympic Games were used by world powers on the world stage to demonstrate the superiority of their system of governance. The communist Iron Curtain countries sent their Drago-like, state-supported, drug-addled, robotic athletes against true Western amateur athletes to demonstrate communism’s superiority to capitalism.

The whole world stopped during the Summer Olympic Games between 1956 and 1988.

The modern Olympics have become a sprawling, diffused jumble of unrelated events. I am not saying the athletes do not care. They care deeply. I am saying the larger cultural weight is not the same.

Back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and through the 80s, the Olympic Games were the athletic version of the showdown at the OK Corral: communism versus capitalism, freedom versus totalitarianism, serious stuff. Back then, the Olympics mattered in a geopolitical way that is almost impossible to recreate.

Nowadays, not so much. It makes it easier to let go of a dream no one in the broader public was ever really begging to see.

Equipment Notes for Strength Sports Outside the Olympic Dream

Olympic recognition or no Olympic recognition, strength athletes still need dependable tools. Powerlifters and weightlifters build their bodies with barbells, plates, benches, racks, belts, platforms, collars, and years of repeated effort.

For barbell-centered strength training, lifters and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, weightlifting belts, and weight benches.

A combo unit such as the Body-Solid SDIB370B bench and squat rack package can support basic benching and squatting in appropriate home or light commercial settings. For Olympic-style pulls or dynamic training on the right surface, IRON COMPANY premium rubber bumper plates are a relevant loading option. A general-purpose bar such as the Body-Solid black oxide Olympic weightlifting bar can support broad strength training when used within its stated specifications.

The equipment does not need Olympic recognition. The athlete does not need IOC approval. The iron tells the truth either way.

Safety and Governance Note for Strength-Sport Aspirations

This article preserves a historical RAW column and Marty Gallagher’s opinionated strength-culture perspective. It is not a recommendation to ignore sport governance, anti-doping rules, equipment standards, judging standards, or athlete safety.

Powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding, and all serious strength sports live or die by rules, standards, and credibility. Heavy training also requires competent technique, appropriate equipment, honest loading, proper warm-ups, spotters or safeties when needed, and respect for recovery.

The Olympic dream was never a substitute for the daily discipline of getting stronger.

Related Olympic Strength Reading

For more on Olympic weightlifting giants and the old strength world, read Yuri Vlasov - The Zeus of Soviet Supermen.