Alekseyev, Vasily Ivanovich

Vasily Ivanovich Alekseyev, (born January 7, 1942, Pokrovo-Shishkino, Russia, U.S.S.R.—died November 25, 2011, Badenhausen, Germany), Soviet weightlifter who was arguably the greatest super heavyweight lifter of all time. Between 1970 and 1978 he set 80 world records and won two Olympic gold medals.

Alekseyev was the son of a lumberjack. At age 12 he was felling trees and lifting logs for exercise, and at age 14 he was wrestling woodsmen on even terms. He was already 1.8 metres (6 feet) tall and weighed 90 kg (198 pounds) when he enrolled at the Archangelsk Forestry Institute in 1961 and was introduced to weightlifting. He eventually reached a body weight of about 160 kg (353 pounds). In 1971 Alekseyev graduated from Novocherkassk Polytechnic Institute and became a mining engineer. In 1972 he was awarded the Order of Lenin, and three years later he joined the Communist Party.

Alekseyev began weightlifting competitively in 1961 but did not make significant progress until after 1965. His breakthrough came at the Soviet Junior Championships in January 1970 when he set four world records. He became the first weightlifter to exceed 600 kg (1,323 pounds) for a three-lift total (clean and jerk, snatch, and clean and press) and the first to clean and jerk more than 226.8 kg (500 pounds) at the world championships in Columbus, Ohio. He held eight European titles (1970–75, 1977–78) and eight world titles (1970–77) and won Olympic gold medals at Munich, West Germany (1972), and Montreal (1976). Had the press, one of Alekseyev’s best lifts, not been eliminated from competition after 1972, he probably would have reached his career goal of 100 world records. In the 1978 world championship, however, he withdrew from competition because of an injury, and at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow he retired after failing to register a total. Far surpassing the achievements of earlier Russian big men Yury Vlasov and Leonid Zhabotinsky, Alekseyev is considered by many to be the greatest super heavyweight lifter of all time. He was inducted into the Weightlifting Hall of Fame in 1993.