Armenia’s Varazdat Lalayan on Sunday won a gold medal in the super-heavyweight category at the 2024 World Weightlifting Championships held in Manama, Bahrain. The win marked Lalayan’s first world championship title.
Lalayan, 25, won a gold medal in the snatch event, as well as a bronze medal in clean and jerk.
Weightlifter Gor Minasyan, an Armenian representing Bahrain, competed in the same weight category and won a silver medal in the snatch event, with a total of 210kg.
Lalayan told reporters that the competition at the World Championship is becoming more intense. “The competition is getting more intense, and the value of gold is even greater now. We must put in more effort and energy to continue bringing gold to Armenia,” he said.
The Weightlifting Federation of Armenia President Hrachya Rostomyan has praised Lalayan for his performance at the 2024 IWF World Championships.
“The world’s strongest weightlifter is Armenian,” Rostomyan said in a statement. “For the first time in history Armenia has a world champion in the superheavyweight weightlifting category.
