Iranian weightlifter Yousefi keen to shatter world C&J record
Iranian weightlifter Alireza Yousefi has set his sights on a massive goal for the next month’s IWF World Championships in Manama: Breaking the seniors clean & jerk world record.
Yousefi, 21, has been the dominant force of the juniors’ superheavyweight class for the past two years.
A triple world gold medalist in 2022, Yousefi repeated the achievement to help Iran win the men’s title at the World Junior Championships in Guadalajara, Mexico, last year.
However, his most sensational performance perhaps came in the 2023 Asian Seniors Championships in Jinju, South Korea, where the Iranian young gun set a new world junior C&J record of 246kg to win a precious silver medal behind Gor Minasyan of Bahrain.
Having been named in the Iranian provisional 12-man squad for the world event last week, Yousefi is confident of setting yet another benchmark in the Bahraini capital.
“I have been preparing well and improved my personal records in training. I’m sure I will have some decent results [at the World Championships] if I keep going like this,” said Yousefi, who is with the rest of team in a training camp on the Kish Island before the final squad is announced for the Manama visit.
“My primary gold will be to win a medal at the World Championships, but at the same time, I’ll be focused on breaking the world clean and jerk record in the seniors age class. I’m confident the feat is within my reach, given my resent lifts in training sessions,” said the Iranian.
Yousefi, however, will face a daunting task in setting a new clean & jerk high as legendary Georgian Lasha Talakhadze is the current world record holder of the category with a remarkable 267kg – set in the 2021 World Championships in Tashkent.
The good news for Yousefi and all of the +109kg contenders is that Talakhadze, who won a third successive Olympic gold in August, was absent in the IWF’s entry list for the world event on Friday.
The Georgian’s absence sets the stage for the tightest race for the superheavyweight crown in years, with Armenian Varazdat Lalayan, and Minasyan – Olympic silver and bronze winners respectively – as well as Iranian Ali Davoudi, who won the silver at the Tokyo Games but missed out on the podium in Paris, all in the mix.
“The World Championships are taking place just a few months after the Paris Games, which means all the Olympic contestants might be far from their peak of fitness, though I’m still going to focus on my own performance in the in Manama,” said Sharifi, who has been dealing with a ligament injury for a while and will have to undergo a knee surgery after the upcoming competitions.
Having collected three medals – including Davoudi’s C&J bronze – in last year’s World Championships, Iran will be looking for a fresh start after a below-par Olympic campaign in the French capital, where the country failed to win a weightlifting medal in the Games for the first time since Beijing 2008.