The Olympic channel made a 26 minute Oscar Figueroa documentary, portraying his journey through the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympic games.
You’ll get insights into how a cervical hernia was ultimately responsible for his odd 2008 bomb out.
A really nice comeback story.
Thanks to everybody submitting this.
Figueroa is an inspiration to many Colombian athletes. Thanks for posting about Colombian weightlifting, keep it coming
This man should be an inspiration to any person- young or old. Incredible story of determination. I watched the live feed of his victory and the heart he showed out on the platform was one of the greatest sport accomplishments I have ever seen.
Watched it a few days ago. I will freely admit that at the end I was welling up. I had seen before his emotional farewell on the Rio platform, but had no idea about the background; it really puts the whole thing into context.
A true fairytale story, and a thoroughly deserved success.
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IPB
Very touching and inspirational story; also, his expression and smile was contagious during his interview! I paused it to look as his happiness!
The only thing is that this video was made to sound like a perfect fairy tale for people who weren’t familiar with the situation. If the video were truer to the actual events, it wouldn’t sound as magical and inspirational, but the pure truth was that going into 2015 and watching Chen fight Kim in Houston, Figueroa thought he didn’t stand a chance at taking more than bronze in Rio. Then, Kim was banned. So that became a likely silver assuming he could see off his Indonesian rival. It wasn’t until competition day in Rio when he saw Chen cramping up that he truly felt and believed that he could take gold. So if the story was 100% true, they would say he went to Rio to win some sort of medal and to do his best one last time before retiring but was surprised with the gold as the heavy favorite suffered an unforeseen circumstance. Problem is it’s not as inspirational as saying that silver was simply not good enough for his country so he went to Rio determined to fight and win the gold.
But it’s still a beautiful story and doesn’t take an ounce off from this man’s accomplishments, attending 4 Olympic games, winning a silver, a gold, and owning an Olympic clean and jerk record.