Olympic superheavyweight champion Behdad Salimi confirmed his status as the world's strongest man today but came up short of beating his own weightlifting world record at the Asian Games.
Iran's Salimi failed at a new snatch mark of 215kg, 1kg above his record set in 2011, with his last lift on the way to a crushing victory.
He had claimed before leaving Tehran last week that he had achieved 215kg in training and he would do it again in Incheon. But he was never in control of the bar and it dropped to groans from a huge contingent of Iranians in the crowd.
They were soon cheering their national hero to the rafters though as he completed a hat-trick of Games records in the over-105kg class with a 210kg snatch and 255kg clean and jerk for an aggregate 365kg in the final event of the weightlifting competition.
"I wanted to break my own record tonight, but I'm very happy to win gold," Salimi said after adding a second Asian Games title to the 2011 world championship and 2012 Olympic gold medal.
The man mountain, who weighed in for the contest at a colossal 171kg, was in a class of his own.
He finished a distant 40kg ahead of second place Ai Yunan of China, with Taiwan's Chen Shih-chien taking the last spot on the podium just 1kg further back.
"I could have done better," said Chen. "I'm happy with bronze but on another day I'm sure I could have silver."
It was a one-sided end to seven days of weightlifting that produced a series of incredible toe-to-toe battles and a slew of world records over eight men's and seven women's weight classes, the last coming earlier Friday in the women's superheavyweight when China's Zhou Lulu lifted 192kg in the clean and jerk.
China topped the lifting tables with seven gold medals after winning two on the final day through Zhou and Yang Zhe in the men's 105kg, while the remarkable North Koreans took four back over the heavily fortified border to Pyongyang.
Taiwan won two golds and Kazakhstan and Iran one each while hosts South Korea endured a disappointing week, finishing with just one silver and one bronze medal as golden hope Sa Jae-Hyouk crashed out of the men's 85kg on Wednesday with three "no-lifts".
