Home » Famous Weightlfters » Nikolay Pechalov Nikolay Pechalov was born in the 30th of May, 1970 in Pazardjik, Bulgaria. Croatia, which is officially known as the Republic of Croatia, is a country at the crossroads of the Central Europe, the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The capital of Croatia is Zagreb. Croatia forms its borders with Serbia to the northeast, Hungary and Slovenia to the north, Herzegovina and Bosnia to the east, the Adriatic Sea to the south and Montenegro to the far southeast.

Nikolay Pechalov is the World and the Olympic champion in the field of weightlifting. In first phase of his career, Pechalov competed under the flag of Bulgaria, but during the later parts he moved to Croatia and represented the new country, and became a Croatian athlete.

Nikolay Pechalov is reputed of being one of the greatest weightlifters in the world. Weight lifting is a sport which requires tremendous physical strength as well as a positive state of mind and all these were available with Nikolay Pechalov. In this sport competitors try to lift heavy weights mounted on steel bars called barbells and the execution of which is a blend of skill, flexibility, power, technique, concentration, discipline, will power, athletic ness, fitness, physical strength and mental strength. The term, weightlifting is sometimes used to refer to weight training. Olympic weightlifting prepares the athlete for functional strength and using the major muscle groups of the body. It is because of this reason that the Olympic lifts are extensively used in to train sportspersons of various other disciplines like American Football.

Olympic Weightlifting is a sport which consists of two events called the snatch and jerk. In snatch the competitors have to lift the barbell over their heads from the platform or floor in one continuous movement, and the jerk is where competitors firstly clean the barbell from the floor to an intermediate place and then racking the bar in a front squat, and standing up in the concentric portion of the front squat, they ultimately jerk the barbell to a position which is above their head. In both of these cases, in case of a successful lift, the competitor should have to hold the bar steady above his or her head, with arms and legs straight and without motion. A third lift, which was seen in the Olympics until the year, 1972. The clean and press totally varies from the clean and jerk, in that the weight is pressed directly up from the chest with the help of the arms only, while standing, and the jerk uses the power of legs to assist the arms part of the way up, which is also followed by the sinking of the body downward into a split or squat to complete the extension of the arms, before standing once again. The press was rejected due to the problem in judging whether the lift was performed correctly or not.

Nikolay Pechalov during his long and very successful career was credited of becoming the World champion 8 times, in different disciplines and categories, and broke a number of world records. His Olympic medals are split between Bulgaria in the year 1992 and 1996 and Croatia in the year 2000 and 2004.