Screenshot from official Pentagon video
Flashback a couple months: Before War Secretary Pete Hegseth became famous for his “Roid Rage” press conferences at the Pentagon, he gained renown with a video of himself bench pressing 315. I wasn’t impressed. I commented on Facebook: “I bench-pressed that much when I was in high school. Guys past the age of 30 who fixate on their bench press totals tend to avoid mental heavy lifting.”
Hell hath no fury like hypersensitive weightlifters and Hegseth worshippers. A thousand angry comments surged onto my Facebook page. Zealots proclaimed that I was a “bolshevik,” “douchebag,” “fucking moron,” “crybaby leftist,” “soyjak,” “old cnt,” “just being a hater,” and “fuckin clown.” The online mob was certain that I had probably never done any weightlifting in my life.
I would not have bothered responding except busloads of folks were doubting my statement. As I explained in a Mises Institute piece on the controversy, I was a competitive weightlifter in my teens. But I had no video or documentary evidence on that score.
Yesterday, I came across the mimeographed meet results from a Clean and Jerk weightlifting competition from May 1972. I was 15 and came in second in the 165 pound category with a lift of 180. I cleaned (lifted from the floor up to my shoulders) 190 three times but never quite locked out my elbows with the bar above my head. But I did lift more that day than the heavyweight champion for my age category. The Official Virginia Strength and Power Hall of Fame cites that 1972 Culpeper contest as a memorable event in the history of Virginia weightlifting.
I shifted away from weight-lifting competition after that, figuring that I had a better chance of poaching a college scholarship throwing discus. (Wrong, dude.) I first bench-pressed 315 two years later in a duel with a fellow track team discus thrower. I don’t have a video of that competition but I was 30 pounds heavier and in the top tier of Virginia high school discus throwers that year. Most guys can bench press significantly more than they can hoist overhead with a Clean and Jerk lift.
Anyhow, this was long ago in the last century. And there are lots of controversies nowadays worth a helluva more attention….
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