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In the beginning there was the age of the professional strongman, performing on the vaudeville and music hall stages of Europe and America in the late 1800s.
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First recorded contest
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Weightlifting in the inaugural 1896 Olympics in Athens featured two events, a one-handed lift and a two-handed lift.
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In 1901 Marquis Luigi Monticelli-Obizzi of Italy made a list of suggestions that would result in significant changes over the course of time, if not immediately.
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What remained were mostly the three classic Olympic lifts. They did not become standard until the 1928 Olympics
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The bench press was a little known exercise until the late 1940s. Again it took off in the 1950s with superb performances by Hepburn and Marvin Eder.
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The power lifts were not competed on much until the 1950s, being referred to as "odd lifts" in those days.
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In the 1960s powerlifting would emerge as a new sport and would then diverge from Olympic lifting and develop separately.
