Lidia Valentín


Lidia Valentín Pérez is a Spanish weightlifter, Olympic Champion, 2 time World Champion and 4 time European Champion competing in the 75 kg category until 2018 and 81 kg starting in 2018 after the International Weightlifting Federation reorganized the categories. Lidia has won three Olympic Medals, two World Weightlifting Championships, as well as four European Weightlifting Championships.

Career

At the 2007 World Championships, she ranked sixth in the 75 kg category with a total of 240 kg.
At the 2013 World Championships, she won bronze in the snatch and placed fourth in the total, being promoted to silver and bronze respectively when Olga Zubova was disqualified for failing a doping test. In 2017, Lidia won the World Weightlifting Championship held in Anaheim, United States.
At the European Championships, she won four gold medals for the total in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018 three silver medals and three bronze medals, with three gold and four silver medals in the snatch, and two gold, one silver and five bronze medals in the clean and jerk.

Olympics

In 2008, Valentín competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 75 kg category finishing in fifth place at the time of competition with a 250 kg total. In 2016 retest of samples from the 75 kg category at the 2008 Olympics returned positive results for the original gold medalist Cao Lei and bronze medalist Nadezhda Evstyukhina, their results were disqualified and Valentín was awarded the silver medal.
In 2012, Valentín competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the 75 kg category again. This time she finished in fourth place with a 265 kg total, behind the 8 new Olympic Records set by Svetlana Podobedova and Natalia Zabolotnaya. In 2016 during retests, all three original medalists had returned positive results thus disqualifying their medals and Olympic Records. This made Valentín the Olympic Champion by default and in March 2019 she was awarded her gold medal.
In 2016, while waiting for confirmation of these medals, Valentín competed in the 2016 Olympics, where she lifted a total of 257 kg and won the bronze medal. It was, at the time, Spain's first medal ever in weightlifting.

Major results