Jaroslaw Olech Wins His 17th IPF World Title, Breaks World Deadlift/Total Records

If you haven’t heard Jaroslaw Olech’s name before, you should know that he may in fact be one of the most accomplished powerlifters of all time. At the IPF Open World Championships that are being held all week in the Czech Republic (here are some of the most impressive squats we’ve seen from the event), Olech just won his seventeenth straight IPF World Title in the -74kg division, and he set two world records in the process.

Olech, who is 43 years old and hails from Poland, set a world record total with 908 kilograms (2001.8 pounds), beating out his previous record by 3 kilograms, and he made a world record equipped deadlift of 328 kilograms, or 723.1 pounds. You can watch it below — note that he’s able to start his sumo deadlift with his hips below his knees.

[Not a fan of the sumo deadlift? Here are four benefits to it you may have overlooked.]

The previous world record for the equipped deadlift in that weight class was 327.5 kilograms (722 pounds), which was made by Sergei Gaishinetc at a 2015 meet in Germany. He was twenty-nine years old.

Olech also attempted to break his squat world record, which he set with 367.5 kilograms back in 2013. He loaded the bar with 368 kilograms, but it was not to be.

So does seventeen straight titles make him the most accomplished IPF athlete of all time? Maybe. Between 2002 and 2017, Japanese powerlifter Hideaki Inaba has won an extremely impressive sixteen world titles in the across the -67.5kg, -74kg, and -75kg weight classes, but Olech may well have the longest streak we know of. (Let us know in the comments if you can think of anyone else.)

Oh, and just to pad his resume a little, Olech is also a three-time World Games champion. You can watch all three of his lifts from this year’s Games below.

He squatted 355 kilograms (782.6lb), benched 212.5 kilograms (467.4lb), and deadlifted 315 kilograms (694.5lb) for a total of 882.5 kilograms (1945.5lb), which was 25.5 kilograms lighter than the total he just put up at the IPF Worlds.

This is a man who may well deserve a spot among the most impressive powerlifters ever.

Featured image via AerinQQ on YouTube.

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