Olympic superheavyweight champion Behdad Salimi confirmed his status as the world's strongest man Friday but came up short of beating his own weightlifting world record at the Asian Games. Iran's Salimi failed at a new snatch mark of 215kg, 1kg above his record set in 2011, with his last lift on the way to a crushing victory.
He had claimed before leaving Tehran last week that he had achieved 215kg in training and he would do it again in Incheon. But he was never in control of the bar and it dropped to groans from a huge contingent of Iranians in the crowd. They were soon cheering their national hero to the rafters though as he completed a hat-trick of Games records in the over-105kg class with a 210kg snatch and 255kg clean and jerk for an aggregate 365kg in the final event of the weightlifting competition.
"I wanted to break my own record tonight, but I'm very happy to win gold," Salimi said after adding a second Asian Games title to the 2011 world championship and 2012 Olympic gold medal. The man mountain, who weighed in for the contest at a colossal 171kg, was in a class of his own. He finished a distant 40kg ahead of second place Ai Yunan of China, with Taiwan's Chen Shih-chien taking the last spot on the podium just 1kg further back.