Naim Süleymanoğlu

Naim Süleymanoğlu was born in a mountain village in Bulgaria, into the country's Turkish minority, the son of a miner. He was tiny, less than five feet tall as an adult, but freakishly strong, and by 15 he had set his first world record. By 16 he was lifting three times his own body weight.

In the mid-1980s the Bulgarian government began a campaign against its Turkish population, closing mosques, banning the language and forcing people to adopt Slavic names. He was made to compete as Naum Shalamanov, and he hated it. In December 1986, at a competition in Melbourne, he slipped away from the team and made his way to the Turkish consulate. He was flown to Turkey, and in the argument over whether he could represent his new country, Turkey reportedly paid Bulgaria a large sum to release him.

At the Seoul Olympics in 1988 he won gold in the featherweight class with world records in every lift, and the whole Turkish team lifted him on their shoulders. He won again in Barcelona in 1992 and in Atlanta in 1996, in a duel with Valerios Leonidis that is still regarded as the greatest weightlifting contest ever held. He set 46 world records.

He died in 2017 of liver failure, aged 50, and was mourned in Turkey as a national hero.