Is Rizki Juniansyah Weightlifting’s Biggest Jerk?

At the highest levels of competition, jerking separates the best athletes from the pack.

Last updated on November 5th, 2024

In April, Rizki Juniansyah made a big splash in the weightlifting world when he sniped one of Indonesia’s athlete slots from teammate Rahmat Erwin Abdullah. Juniansyah went on to win the 73-kilogram event at the 2024 Olympics. 

• It’s often said that performance in the clean & jerk, one of weightlifting’s two competitive disciplines, wins or loses meets. Based on recently-released footage, Juniansyah is the second-best middleweight jerker in history. 

In the months leading up to the Paris Games, Juniansyah jerked 217 kilograms, or 478.4 pounds, off blocks — a sliver under three times his own body weight. Only one weightlifter, ever, has done better. 

Rizki Juniansyah: The Best Jerker in Weightlifting? 

Footage of Juniansyah’s lift hit social media on Oct. 30, 2024. According to source and friend of BarBend @VintageLifts, Juniansyah’s 217 was the second-heaviest jerk ever made by any middleweight weightlifting athlete in history.

• In 1987, Bulgarian weightlifter Alexander Varbanov reportedly clean & jerked 222 kilograms while training for that year’s World Weightlifting Championships (Varbanov would get second place). He competed in the 75-kilogram class, making his lift the heaviest recorded jerk by an athlete in the sport’s middle categories.

As of Nov. 2024, the 73-kilogram clean & jerk world record is a mighty 204 kilograms. It belongs to Abdullah, whom Juniansyah dislodged from his Paris trajectory in an upset at the IWF World Cup. 

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In Context: Only one athlete per category, per country, was allowed to lift at the 2024 Olympics. Throughout the 18-month qualification period, Abdullah was in the driver’s seat. Thanks to his spectacular overhead strength, Juniansyah out-lifted his countryman at the last weightlifting meet of the qualification cycle. 

This isn’t the first time a middleweight weightlifting athlete achieved greatness thanks to a surplus of strength in the split jerk. During the Men’s 77-kilogram final at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Kazakh weightlifter Nijat Rahimov leapfrogged gold-medal favorite Lu Xiaojun. 

Xiaojun finished his clean & jerks with 202 kilograms — coupled with his 177-kilogram snatch, Rahimov needed to jump from his own 202 attempt to 214 to out-Total Lu. Thanks to unbelievable strength in the split jerk, he made the lift by the skin of his teeth. 

• Rahimov forfeited his medal in 2022 after failing a doping test. Silver medalist Lu and bronzer Mohamed Ehab were also “popped” for performance-enhancing drugs years later. As of 2024, the International Olympic Committee has not redistributed the 77-kilogram medals to other athletes. 

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In Context: The clean & jerk as it is performed in competition is not the same as hitting a split jerk in training. Juniansyah likely weighed more than his category cap of 73 kilograms and did not have to deal with the rigors of a competition environment before hitting his 217. There are no medals in weightlifting solely for the split jerk.

At the 2024 Olympics, Juniansyah found himself in a similar position; he was down by 10 kilograms in the snatches to Team China’s two-time Olympic Champion, Shi Zhiyong. Shi floundered in the jerks, but Juniansyah’s reservoir of strength carried him to the top of the podium.

After seeing Juniansyah jerk 217 — a comfortable 13-kilogram margin over his teammate’s world record — his triumph in Paris makes perfect sense. 

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