Champion weightlifter, Aleksandër Kondo!

The idol!

It was the beginning of the 80s. Among cinema and television, the films of the 30 years before “Cinema Peplum” occupied a special place. Hercules or Maciste appeared to the Albanian Screens of those years through the spectacular feats of the artist who came from the world of body building!

Mostly the children found their hero. His name was Steve Reeves!

There was the beauty of the male body full of muscles!

On the pages of our school books and notebooks, those failed pencil sketches of a muscular body had a place of honor.

The afternoons, with some rusty crancshaft truck and in parallels exercises we tried to transform ourselfs into what our hero Steve Reeves  had built over the years in the gym, with exercises and diets. An amazing body!

It was precisely that time when Albanian weightlifting, of heavy weights, produced three protagonists. Aleksander Kondo – Dinamo, Erlin Haxhinikolla -17 Nentori and Mirjan Hakani – Lokomotiva e Durres.

Suddenly, the finals of the category of this championship filled up the “Partizani Sports Palace” as full as the international matches of Dinamo in Volleyball for women and those of Partizan in Basketball for men!

Champion, Alexander Kondo!

Most of all, apart from the beautiful competition between the three athletes, he was the reason why sports fans filled the stands. Initially, the word was spread by the spectators who came out amazed by the competition, during which, the young man with a muscular body, lifted the super heavy weights as easily as Hercules in the movie “stones” from “fish bread”!

Later, the Television TVSH arrived and the images transmitted by the “Rubrika Sportive” Show on Mondays, left the whole of Albania amazed. The handsome Aleksander Kondo, with a body you’ve only seen in movies, lifts easily, even greeting the audience with a smile while lifting 200kg!

The next day, hundreds of children went and registered in the sport of weightlifting, in Tirana and all of Albania!

Those children would later become champions of the Balkans, Europe and the World, in most cases kissing flags and listening to anthems of other countries…

The fame of Steve Reeves, from that Monday evening, began to fade in Albania!

Sandri became the symbol of that sport and the hero not only of children in the whole country. Weightlifting became one of the most important sports and a champion production factory and continues to be so even today.

Sandri, in a way, was made for us, he opened between two eras. The one of the past with Steve Reeves and the one that was reaching with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Aleksander Kondo, our Sandri, first became a symbol and after his tragic death at the age of 27, he became a legend!

by Arian Muraj

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Sports Vision + / The Champion`s Hour since 2013