Greece’s Dimas Prevails in a Three-Way Tie

Greece’s Pyrros Dimas joined “Pocket Hercules” Naim Suleymanoglu as one of only two weightlifters to have won three Olympic gold medals.

Dimas, one of the showmen of the sport, won a dramatic 187-pound contest in which all three medalists finished with the same total of 639 pounds.

In such cases the lightest athlete wins and Dimas, light- middleweight champion in Barcelona and Atlanta, had tipped the scales at 185.3 pounds to Marc Huster’s 185.7 and George Asanidze’s 186.7. Germany’s Huster had to settle for his second consecutive silver and Asanidze gave Georgia their first ever Olympic weightlifting medal by taking bronze.

Dimas has a stunning star, when he hovered too long over the bar and failed to make his lift before the one-minute time limit expired.

“I was very stressed before the competition because I just had to win a gold medal for my country,” he said. “I lost my concentration the first time and then miscalculated the lift the second time.”