What's going on with weightlifting?

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ashish Sharma explores the problems facing one of the world’s oldest sports.

A governance crisis has engulfed the sport of weightlifting and it faces an uncertain future, and as it stands weightlifting won´t feature in the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

We explore the financial implications for this iconic Olympic sport if it loses the funding it gets for being on the Olympic agenda. We speak to young weightlifters about their future in the sport, attend a weightlifting contest in Mexico and report from the election for the new head of the International Weightlifting Federation.

Producer / presenter: Ashish Sharma Image: Turkey's Daniyar Ismayilov competes at Rio 2016; Credit: Salih Zeki Fazlolu / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	The bomb unearths a gripping true story of espionage at the core of the British-American atomic research programs.
0:09.7	Find out more in season two of The Bomb, a podcast from the BBC World Service, available now.
0:18.9	Ah!
0:19.4	You get it?
0:20.0	Wait, wait, wait, go! The first ever modern Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens, and one of the inaugural sports featured was weightlifting.
0:43.6	Today, though, for the first time ever the sport faces being thrown out of the Olympic program and as it stands won't feature in the Los Angeles Games in
0:49.3	2028. If that happens it'll be a shattering blow to the future of the sport, with many national federations facing huge financial losses.
0:59.0	We have approximately 15 employees, and if we are out of the Olympics, we didn't receive any money from the government because then we are a non-Olympic sport and then we have approximately
1:13.7	90% of our employees had to kick out of the federation.
1:19.1	We'll hear more from Florian Schpel, the president of the German Weightlifting Federation.
1:24.3	Like many sports which rely on the youths to be stars of the future, weightlifting could also lose out on athletes who prefer a sport which allows them to chase the Olympic dream.
1:34.6	One such rising star from Malta is 16-year-old Tanisha Thornton.
1:38.7	I train hard every day, obviously. The fact that they won't probably be the opportunity to go to participate in the Olympics.
1:45.9	It's just hard because of doping and the mistake of others.
1:49.6	My name is Ashishama and in this edition of Business Daily,
1:54.2	we asked just why this sport has reached such a crisis point
1:57.5	and explore the financial implications and otherwise in losing out on an Olympic spot.
2:03.6	A documentary by the German network, ARD, called Lord of the Lifters in 2017, blew the lid on
2:09.8	wide-scale corruption, fraud and massive doping allegations aimed at the very top of the
2:14.8	International Weightlifting Federation, the IWF.
2:18.5	The President, Tamas Ajan, was forced out after facing allegations of holding two Swiss bank accounts
2:24.6	laden with some $20 million of IOC funds.
	...

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