Naim Süleymanoğlu

Naim Süleymanoğlu was a Turkish weightlifter born in Bulgaria on 23 January 1967, who died in Istanbul on 18 November 2017. He was a three-time Olympic champion and seven-time world champion who set 51 world records between 1983 and 1996, and is widely considered the greatest pound-for-pound weightlifter in the history of the sport. At 147 cm tall, his short stature and extraordinary strength earned him the nickname "Pocket Hercules". ^{1 2}

Süleymanoğlu was born in the village of Ptichar in Kardzhali Province, Bulgaria, the son of a miner. He set a world record in his teens and would have been the overwhelming favourite for gold at the 1984 Olympics had Bulgaria not joined the Eastern Bloc boycott of those Games. ¹

In the 1980s Bulgaria's government ran the so-called Revival Process, forcing ethnic minorities to adopt Slavic names and barring their languages; in 1985 Süleymanoğlu was made to change his name to Naum Shalamanov. In 1986, on a trip to the World Cup final in Melbourne, he escaped his handlers, hid for several days, and defected at the Turkish Embassy in Canberra; he was flown to Turkey and changed his name back to Süleymanoğlu. ^{1 3}

In 2012 he said he had never regretted the decision: the Bulgarians had changed the names of two million people by force, and it had been a very difficult period for Bulgaria's Turks. ¹

For Süleymanoğlu to compete for Turkey at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Bulgaria had to release his eligibility; Turkey paid $1.25 million for the release. In Seoul he set successive world records in the snatch, the clean and jerk and the total, finishing with a 190.0 kg clean and jerk equal to 3.15 times his body weight, the highest ratio in the sport's history; his total would have won the weight class above his own. After the Games he appeared on the cover of Time magazine. ¹

He retired in 1989 after the world championship, returned in 1991, and won a second Olympic gold at Barcelona in 1992. He retired again after a third consecutive gold at Atlanta in 1996, a competition famous for his duel with Greece's Valerios Leonidis, in which the two traded world-record lifts until Süleymanoğlu raised 187.5 kg and Leonidis failed at 190 kg. A final comeback attempt at Sydney in 2000, aiming for a record fourth gold, ended when he failed three attempts at 145 kg. ¹

He was the first weightlifter to snatch 2.5 times his body weight, and the only one to clean and jerk ten kilograms more than triple his body weight. He was awarded the Olympic Order in 2001 and was elected to the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame in 2000 and 2004. ¹

Süleymanoğlu stood for the Turkish parliament as an independent in 1999 and later for the Nationalist Movement Party, unsuccessfully in each bid for office. ¹

In his last years he suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and was hospitalised for nearly three months in 2009. He was admitted to hospital with liver failure on 25 September 2017, received a liver transplant on 6 October, and underwent surgery for a brain haemorrhage on 11 November; he died on 18 November 2017 and was buried at Edirnekapı Martyr's Cemetery in Istanbul. ^{1 2}

A biographical film, "Pocket Hercules: Naim Süleymanoğlu", was released in Turkey in 2019, and his hometown of Momchilgrad in Bulgaria has a monument, a sports complex and a museum bearing his name. ¹

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