Paul Anderson (weightlifter)

Paul Anderson

Paul Anderson (born October 17, 1932 in Toccoa , Georgia , † August 15, 1994 ) was an American weightlifter .

Career

Paul Anderson, who suffered from severe liver disease as a child, weighed around 90 kg as a teenager with a height of 1.75 m and showed little athletic talent. So he decided to play football to get fitter. He wanted to increase his physical performance through targeted dumbbell training . In the meantime he studied at a university and now fully concentrated on weightlifting. His body weight increased to over 150 kg over time. In 1953 he first drew attention to himself by taking third place at the US Junior Championships weighing 437.5 kg in the Olympic three-way battle. In December 1953 he had reached 450 kg when he broke his hand in January 1954 and had a car accident in the fall of 1954, which meant that he could not compete for the whole of 1954.

But in 1955 he was the first US champion. In the summer of 1955 he was with the US national squadron on an international combat trip in the USSR, a trip that was organized by the US State Department and was intended to improve understanding with the USSR. In the fall of 1955 he became world heavyweight champion in Munich . In 1956 he achieved his best three-way performance ever achieved at the US championships with 533 kg. Afterwards he tried to reduce his body weight through a specific diet in order to be more flexible in tearing and pushing. He lost from 168 kg to 138 kg body weight. But with the pounds, his strength, on which he actually lived, also melted away. At the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956, he could only push 167.5 kg, almost 20 kg less than in 1955 in Munich. Only a special achievement in the third attempt to push with 187.5 kg, after two failed attempts with this weight, saved him the Olympic victory over the Argentine Humberto Selvetti , who achieved the same performance as Anderson with 500 kg, but about 1.5 kg heavier was.

After the Olympic Games in 1956, Anderson resigned from competitive sports and worked as a strength athlete, boxer and catcher . When enough money had been raised, he and his wife founded a youth home in 1961, where he took in stranded young people and tried to lead them back to a Christian life.

After a kidney transplant in 1983, Paul Anderson died in 1994 at the age of 62.

International success

1955 1st place , World Championships in Munich , S, with 512.5 kg, ahead of James Bradford , USA , 475 kg and Eino Mäkinen , Finland , 422.5 kg;
1956, gold medal , OS in Melbourne , S, with 500 kg, ahead of Humberto Selvetti , Argentina , 500 kg and Alberto Pigaiani , Italy , 452.5 kg;
1956 international campaign trip to the USSR:
in Moscow: Anderson, 518 kg, against Alexei Sidorowitsch Medvedev , 450 kg,
in Leningrad: Anderson, 512.5, kg against Yevgeny Novikov , 450 kg.