Considered widely as the greatest super heavyweight weightlifter ever, Vasily Alekseyev was weightlifter who represented Soviet Union in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games in Munich and Montreal respectively. He has the reputation of setting 81 Soviet records and 80 world records in all.

Alekseyev started practicing weightlifting when he was 18 years old. His coach, Rudolf Plyukfelder trained him at the Trud Voluntary Sports Society till the year 1968. After that, Alekseyev trained alone and by the beginning of the year 1970, he had already set his first world record. From there, he began a process of setting 80 world records between the years 1970 and 1977. He also managed to remain unbeaten in these eight years in the European and World Championships.

Alekseyev was also known to train in unique ways like diving into a lake with a barbell and pushing it out. He invented his own set of training methods which was way different when compared to the traditional practices. It was also considered to be extremely difficult.

In the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Alekseyev won the gold medal in the super heavyweight category beating Rudolf Mang and Gerd Bonk. He went on to win the gold medal in the same category at the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics beating Gerd Bonk and Helmut Losch. However, when he returned to compete in the Olympics in 1980, he failed miserably in front of his home crowd in Moscow. He set his opening weight very high and couldn’t manage to lift it, scoring 0 kilos as a result. He quit weightlifting after 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics and ventured into politics. In the year 1999, he was voted to be the best sportsman of the twentieth century. He has also been awarded numerous other honors like Order of Friendship of Peoples, Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner of Labor and Order of the Badge of Honor. He has also been inducted in the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame.