Weightlifting: Stranglehold on wrestling gold

By CHRIS RATTUE

The weight of history proved too much for Turkey's Naim Suleymanoglu.

Seeking a fourth Olympic Games weightlifting gold medal, he failed to total.

Meanwhile, British rower Steve Redgrave found Olympic glory again, in the coxless four, winning gold at a fifth Olympics.

Another Olympics legend has fallen somewhere in between.

The Russian Rocket, freestyle swimmer Alexander Popov, could not win a third gold in the 50 and 100 metres.

Popov complains that he has received more recognition in his adopted country Australia - where he even has a road named after him - than in his homeland.

But the record-holding Russian was beaten by Dutchman Pieter van den Hoogenband in the 100m, and was just sixth in the 50m.

Popov's countryman Alexander Karelin is a different story.

No one expects him to fail.

Instead it is always his wrestling opponents who fail - sometimes deliberately to avoid the pain and embarrassment he causes with his reverse body lift.

Karelin has none of Popov's recognition problems in Russia.

Competing in Greco-Roman wrestling, where the opponents use just their upper bodies, he rules the way no other athlete, in no other sport, does.

Karelin, whose 130kg programme begins today at the exhibition halls at Darling Harbour, has conceded only one point in the past 10 years of competition.

He is unbeaten since at the age of 19.

And his opponents are in awe. A beaten Greek opponent at the Atlanta Games said he would be "honoured to tell my children I wrestled this great man."

The American he beat for gold at Atlanta, Matt Ghaffari, said as soon as he conceded a point he was doomed.

"I just can't score on the guy. He doesn't give you an opening."

The wrestler expected to provide strongest competition in Sydney for Karelin, Atlanta bronze medallist Sergej Mureiko of Bulgaria, lists him as the man he most admires.

Karelin, a Siberian who trains by running in waist deep snow and and carrying logs on his back, is also a parliamentarian,and a a confidante of Russian President Vladmir Putin.

Under new Greco-Roman rules, the combatants will begin the second of two three-minute rounds in a clinch if the first round is scoreless.

But that is unlikely to be necessary in Karelin's bouts, as the "Juggernaut" seeks to become the first wrestler to win four Olympic golds.