Karlos Nasar back to his best

Karlos Nasar won his tenth straight international competition in style with a 230kg clean and jerk at the end of a dramatic 95kg contest. It was the biggest lift in an international competition by anybody weighing under 100kg for seven years, showing that the Bulgarian is back to his best after a temporary drop in performance.

A few minutes from the end of a tough session at the IWF World Championships in Ningbo – in which five athletes either bombed out or declined attempts – it looked as though Nurgissa Adiletuly from Kazakhstan might push Nasar all the way.

When Adiletuly claimed the world record on total with a lift to spare, he had surpassed his career-best total by 11kg.  

But Nasar went past him and had already won when he came out for that sensational 230kg lift, which beat the clean and jerk world standard by 10kg and left him 16kg clear of Adiletuly on a six-from-six 185-230-415. It was the best total of the Championships on GAMX points (1298), the IWF’s preferred all-weights scoring system.

Nobody had lifted that much, weighing less than 100kg, since Tian Tao – who was in the audience today – at the 2019 World Championships.

Remarkably, it was not the first time Nasar has done it. Three months after he won Olympic gold in 2024 he lifted 230kg in a German Bundesliga fixture, which does not count towards world records, weighing about 94kg. He weighed 94.5kg today.

There have been well-documented problems for Nasar in the past year. He changed coaches, and has been in dispute with the “dysfunctional” Bulgarian Federation, which recently declared bankruptcy, and its former president Stefan Botev.

Other nations tried to persuade him to switch teams but he said, “I won’t listen to another anthem for any amount of money.”

Nasar thanked the Bulgarian sports ministry for its support in sending the team to China and his own sponsors “who have not abandoned me for a single day in the past three years”.

He had illness and injury problems in the weeks before the Championships but went into the competition “as healthy as a bull”. He showed it on the platform. Nasar’s total was 29kg more than he made in winning the European 94kg title in April.

Adiletuly, who geed up the audience after his world record and clearly enjoyed himself, made five good lifts in his 182-217-399, failing to clean his final attempt at 224kg. He is entered at 110kg in the IWF Qualifier in Qatar in December; whether he stays there remains to be seen.

Ali Alipour from Iran, the Asian Games champion who saw Nasar better his world record on total by 17kg, was third on 181-215-396.

Lee Seongwon from Korea made a huge career-best clean and jerk to temporarily move into third place before dropping to fifth on 171-214-385, the same total as fourth-placed Qian Feixiang from China. The Georgian junior Goga Jajvani was sixth on 173-202-375.

Qian’s team-mate Tu Yi, who was third in the Asian Games on 384kg, is entered alongside Qian in Qatar.

Nasar was one of three Olympic champions competing throughout the day. Kianoush Rostami, who won at Rio 2016 for Iran and now competes for Kosovo aged 35, made only two good lifts in the C Group but because there were so many bombouts and red lights in A and B, he was ninth overall on 170-201-371.

The Tokyo gold medallist Meso Hassona has had injury problems and made a cautious start in the A Group, declining his final two attempts and finishing 13th on 160-205-365.

Among those who bombed out was Ihar Lozka from Belarus, who last lifted internationally in 2019 when he was a silver medallist in the European Juniors down at at 81kg.