Weightlifting 2:
Competitive Weightlifting Begins
The competitive sport of weightlifting originated with the professional strong men of the 19th century. (See Powerlifting.)
George Barker Windship, a Harvard-educated physician, health reformer, and strong man who was billed as the "American Sampson," was one of the sport's most important pioneers.
Windship lectured at Bryan Hall in Chicago in February of 1861, before a strong man contest that's generally considered the first true weightlifting competition. For a $200 prize, Windship had agreed to take on all challengers. Only one came forward, a Mr. Thompson, first name unknown.
Thompson not only won the contest, he lifted 2,100 pounds to break Windship's former record of 1,934 pounds. It should be noted that both competitors used lifting aids involving harnesses and slings, and that Windship was forced out of the competition after his contraption broke.
Despite that defeat, Windship became the foremost advocate of heavy lifting, as opposed to the exercises with relatively lightweight dumbbells that were becoming standard in gyms and training regimens.
Windship is generally credited with inventing the plate-loading barbell, which he patented in 1865. He called it a the "Practical Graduating Dumb-Bell." The $16 set included an 8-pound shaft of cast iron, ten half-pound plates and four plates each of 4, 8, and 10 pounds, allowing a total of 101 pounds.
Unfortunately, Windship was killed by a stroke in 1876, at the age of 42, and his death was widely ascribed to his lifting. That set the sport back in North America for quite a while.
Windship's European counterpart was another physician, Vladislav Krayevsky (Krajewski), a native of Poland who studied weightlifting throughout Germany. Krayevsky also espoused heavy lifting and, in 1885, he founded the St. Petersburg Amateur Weightlifting Society, the first organization of its kind in the world. The Österreichische Athleten Bund was founded in 1890 to govern several sports, including weightlifting, in Austria, and a national federation for weightlifting was established in Germany the following year.
But the first national championship was held in England in January of 1891, under the auspices of the London Athletic Institute. There was so much public interest that Sir John Astley, a major patron of sports, announced that he would sponsor an international weightlifting tournament in March.
Lifters from Austria, Belgium, Germany, and the United States entered the meet. There were eight events, including exercises with dumbbells. Another international tournament was held in Vienna that September.
In the early years, there was considerable controversy about which lifts should be included in competition. At the first modern Olympics in 1896, there were just two events, the one-handed dumbbell lift and the two-handed barbell lift. In the two-handed event, Launceston Elliott of Great Britain and Viggo Jensen of Denmark each lifted 115.kilograms, but Jensen was awarded the gold medal for displaying better style. Elliott won the one-handed lift.
Weightlifting wasn't on the 1900 Olympic program, but it returned in 1904 with two events, the two-hand barbell lift and the all-around dumbbell contest, which was based on nine different lifts.
At the 1906 intercalated Olympics in Athens, there was just one weightlifting event, the one-hand lift, but with a difference: a competitor had to lift a given weight with each hand for the lift to count.
Then weightlifting was again dropped from the Olympics. When it returned in 1920, weight classes were used for the first time and medal standings were based on the aggregate of three lifts: the the one-hand snatch, one-hand jerk, and two-hand jerk. That was increased to five lifts in 1924, with the addition of the two-hand press and two-hand snatch.
The three "classic lifts," press, snatch, and jerk, were established in 1928. They remained the triumvirate of Olympic weightlifting until 1976, when the press was dropped because of continuous controversy over what constituted a proper lift.