Rafael Chimishkyan
Rafael Arkadyevich Chimishkyan (Georgian: რაფაელ ჩიმიშკიანი, Russian: Рафаэль Аркадьевич Чимишкян; 23 March 1929 – 25 September 2022)[1][2] was a Georgian weightlifter who competed for the Soviet Union and Olympic, World, European and Soviet Champion. Chimishkyan was awarded the Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR title in 1952. He was an honorary citizen of Tbilisi.
Biography
[edit | edit source]Chimishkyan was born in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR on 23 March 1929. He started weightlifting in 1946. In his first Soviet Championship in 1949, he won a gold medal at bantamweight (56 kg). In 1950, Chimishkyan won silver at the World Weightlifting Championships and gold at the European Weightlifting Championships and then switched to featherweight (60 kg). He first won a silver at the Soviet Championships that year in this new category. Chimishkyan became a two-time World Champion (1954 and 1955), six-time European Champion (1950, 1952, 1954–57) and five-time USSR Champion (1949, 1951, 1954, 1955, 1960).
Chimishkyan won an Olympic gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He is the second Soviet weightlifter to become an Olympic Champion.[3] He was the last living Olympic Champion as well as even the last living medalist in Weightlifting from the 1952 Olympics. Chimishkyan set 10 world records during his career: three in the snatch, two in the clean and jerk and five in the total.
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ "1952 Summer Olympics – Helsinki, Finland – Weightlifting" Archived 27 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine – databaseOlympics.com (Retrieved on 23 February 2008)
External links
[edit | edit source]- Rafael Chimishkyan at Lift Up
- Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- databaseOlympics.com
- Lua error in Module:External_links at line 369: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 153: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- 1929 births
- 2022 deaths
- Sportspeople from Tbilisi
- Armenian male weightlifters
- 20th-century people from Georgia (country)
- Soviet male weightlifters
- Male weightlifters from Georgia (country)
- Olympic weightlifters for the Soviet Union
- Olympic gold medalists for the Soviet Union
- Olympic medalists in weightlifting
- Medalists at the 1952 Summer Olympics
- Weightlifters at the 1952 Summer Olympics
- Soviet Armenians
- People from Georgia (country) of Armenian descent
- Honoured Masters of Sport of the USSR
- European Weightlifting Championships medalists
- World Weightlifting Championships medalists
- Ethnic Armenian sportspeople