LONDON: Kazakhstan's Ilya Ilyin set two new world records as he stormed to Olympic under-94kg men's weightlifting gold at the ExCel Arena on Saturday.
The 24-year-old maintained his unbeaten record in international competition with a total of 418kg, beating the old mark of 412kg set by Akakios Kakhiashvili of Greece at the World Championships in Athens in 1999.
Ilyin also broke the clean and jerk record with a lift of 233kg.
Alexander Ivanov of Russia took silver with a lift of 409kg while Moldova's Anatoli Ciricu's total of 407kg was enough for bronze due to him being lighter than Andrey Demanov of Russia.
But the day belonged to the incomparable Ilyin who also retained his Olympic title.
"Perhaps everything comes to Ilya Ilyin because I love my life, my work and my training," he said.
"I give it everything, I give it my soul. What's important is my perception of the world and my spiritual approach to it.
"Perhaps my personality and environment has something to do with it. It all makes Ilya Ilyin love sport. I give my whole heart to sport.
"I love to bring joy to people, I love to compete and to beat strong competitors. I love my life and I'm very happy to be alive."
The Kazakh set the new overall world record of 413kg with his second lift of 228kg in the clean and jerk.
That was enough to secure overall victory once 2010 world champion Ivanov, 23, failed with his third lift of 229kg, which would have broken the world record just set.
With gold already secured, Ilyin stepped up and tried to break Poland's Szymon Kolecki's 12-year-old clean and jerk mark of 232kg.
And the ease with which he hoisted the bar above his head suggested there could be a lot more to come from the three-time world champion.
And he revealed that he would also like to break the snatch record of 188kg set by Akakios 13 years ago.
"I still have quite a lot of potential. Of course I still have some problems in the snatch but I've been trying to hone it and improve it," he said.
"I think in the future I can improve it more and to tell you the truth I wouldn't mind lifting 2kg more."
Ilyin has been unstoppable since winning the world title at just 17 in 2005 at under-85kg.
He completed a world senior and junior double that year and then repeated the feat at under-94kg a year later.
Ilyin started the day by snatching 185kg to match the efforts of Ivanov and South Korea's Kim Min-Jae.
And as he was due to begin the clean and jerk at a higher weight than anyone else, he already appeared to have the title sewn up.
Ivanov did his best to take gold, but he could not improve on his second clean and jerk of 224kg.
And he admitted that on such form, Ilyin would be difficult to beat.
"With such results it's very difficult to compete (with Ilyin) but we've all done our best tonight," he said.
The bronze came down to a close call between two European champions, Ciricu and Demanov.
The Russian, European champion in 2011, lifted 225kg on his third and final clean and jerk to add to his 182kg in the snatch.
Ciricu, European champion this year, had managed one kilogram less in the snatch but his second clean and jerk of 226kg ensured he would win a medal.
He had a third attempt at 228kg which would have given him silver by virtue of weighing 10g less than Ivanov but he couldn't manage that.
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