Why Was A Weightlifter’s Home Transformed Into A Museum?

The beauty of weightlifting is that it is an exercise for everyone that provides a refreshingly simple goal. Ultimately, whether you are in the gym, in your home or on a competition stage lifting regulation bumper plates, it is a battle between you and the weights in front of you.

Because of this, you often see a lot of very interesting competitive weightlifters with similarly fascinating stories behind them. From at least the 19th century, there are countless stories of people who found themselves thanks to weightlifting. 

One of possibly the most famous of these lost souls that found themselves through the art of weightlifting was Naim Suleymanoglu, the Pocket Hercules, who has recently seen his childhood home in Bulgaria transformed into a museum and tribute to his accomplishments as an athlete and as a human being.

It was a remarkable accomplishment and symbol of how sport unites people and countries alike, with people from both Bulgaria and his later adopted homeland, Turkiye.

Whilst there are other shrines to weightlifting, most notably the Hall of Fame in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the cross-cultural nature of this celebration and all it represents both within and beyond the weightlifting world is something worth celebrating and being inspired by.

Who Was Naim Suleymanoglu?

Born in Bulgaria to Turkish parents, Naim Suleymanoglu stood just 1.47m tall (four feet, ten inches), and by the time he entered his teenage years, he was setting world weightlifting records and also feeling the weight of the split between his homeland and ancestral roots.

The infamous “Revival Process” from 1984 was an assimilationist campaign that forced a lot of Turks born in Bulgaria to change their name, change their languages and effectively abandon their homeland.

This, along with the now-infamous decision by the Soviet-occupied Bulgaria not to participate in the 1984 Olympic Games, where the prodigious athlete forced to change his name to Naum Shamamanov would have been a clear favourite to win a gold medal in the 60 kg weight class, made him ultimately defect to Turkiye.

He fled during the 1986 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, seeking sanctuary in the 

Turkish Embassy in Canberra before flying to Ankara by way of London and Istanbul.

Even before Turkey paid $1.25m to release his eligibility and ensure he could compete in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul as part of the Turkish National Team, he was already a national hero who defied the odds to ensure he could compete.

However, what he did at the Olympic Games would go down in history as one of the single greatest weightlifting performances in the history of the Olympic Games.

Why Was He Called The Pocket Hercules?

Returning to his birth name of Naim Suleymanoglu, the legend of the Pocket Hercules was forged during the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Ironically, this was the same event from which the Bulgarian team withdrew after multiple doping violations due to masking agents.

Mr Suleymangolu would be in direct competition with Stefan Tupurov of Bulgaria, who put on an extremely strong performance with a total of 312.5 kg between his Snatch and Clean and Jerk lifts.

However, the Pocket Hercules would put on one of the finest performances in the history of weightlifting, setting two world records and lifting a 190 kg clean and jerk that was 3.15 times his body weight, itself a world record.

He subsequently had one of the most dominant runs in the history of weightlifting, not only winning the gold medal by 30kg in what has been described as the most dominant victory in the history of weightlifting, but one that would have gotten him the gold medal in the class above him.

He would go on to have one of the most dominant runs in the history of Olympic weightlifting, spending eight and a half years undefeated and winning three gold medals.

The last of these, against the similarly heroic Valerius Leonidis, was described as one of the greatest weightlifting competitions of all time due to its incredible closeness, the three consecutive world record lifts and displays of pure emotion and sportsmanship at its finale.

He ultimately retired after a failed attempt to win his fourth gold medal in Sydney in 2000, in no small part due to a 50-cigarette-per-day habit and the decision to start his day with 145kg, bombing out with no option to lower the weight.

His liver began to give up on him in 2009, and following a decade of health issues, the Pocket Hercules died in 2017, a hero to Turkiye and a legacy that remembers his greatness in the 1980s and 1990s rather than his ignominious yet brave final lifts.