Ymer Pampuri (1944-2017), The Albanian World Champion and Olympic Record Breaker!

Ymer Pampuri (1944-2017)
Weight Lifter, Albanian Champion!
He holds the tittles: “Merited Master of Sport” and “Honor of Albanian Sport” / “Naim Frashëri” First Class”!
He is a World Champion in 1972, in 60 Kg Pres, and only a Olympic Record Breaker in the same year, 1972 in the Olympic Games! It is also the runner-up of European Championship (1972), in 60 Kg Class, beside holding the Albanian Champion tittle several times.

Prologue!

Albania has had traditionally the sport of Weightlifting. Before Aleksander Kondo, Hysen Hakani, Luan Shabani or the Grecized Albanian Pirro Dhima, there were big names like Faruk Kalleshi, Ferid Berberi or the only Albanian world champion Ymer Pampuri, about whom we will talk below.

It is strange how such a great name in Albanian weightlifting has passed in silence without his profile being well known, not even by our Albanian sports journalists.
This is an unforgivable case of our sports media! Almost all of them have wrong and outdated information, when it comes to his profile of this greatest champion.

Most of the Albanian sports commentators, without knowing the truth, call him “Olympic Champion”! And even worse, these commentators and journalists, even from the big names of Albanian sports journalism, do not know that Ymer Pampuri is a World (and not an Olympic) Champion. Or better to say, they learned after 29 years (1972 – 2001) that Pampuri is a world champion, winner of the gold medal in the 1972 World Championship in Munich!

Here is what is written by the Albanian Weightlifting Federation, on the occasion of the death of the champion weightlifter, even worse when the news is received and posted on its official website by the International Weightlifting Federation:

Something different, when the guilt is eased, by the confirmed journalist Mr. Besnik Dizdari. In an article published in his newspaper “Futbolli Shqiptar” Mr. Dizdari himself admits that after 29 years Albania has had a world champion….We all were wrong! The title of the article is written exactly like this:

So even Mr. Dizdari was informed by an Italian journalist G. Armilotta.

This gentleman goes further by saying that Mr. Wallechinsky, undoubtedly one of the greatest journalists and historians of the Olympic Games, came to meet Dizdari on purpose (!) of this matter, and Wallechinsky himself did not mention this fact for our weightlifter.

What an arrogance?!

“This is what Mr. Dizdari wrote about it: “When he came to Albania in 1992, Wallechinsky came and met me in the editorial office of “Sport”, happy that he had included in these 4 lines the Olympic history of Ymer Pampuri. Even this scrupulous scholar of Olympism, surprisingly, has not said a word to me about Ymer Pampuri – World Champion.”

First, Mr. David Wallechinsky, well know all around the world, did not came to meet Dizdari but to carry out his mission as a scrupulous Olympiad historian, he came to Tirana to interview our champion Pampuri, as he goes to every country in the world to select as much information as possible for every Olympic champion. And then going further, why Mr. Wallechinsky had to tell Dizdari about Pampuri being a world champion in 1972? Mr. Dizdari is considered the best journalist in the field for us Albanians and he is supposed to know every detail about our champions, right?

In every Olympics or other big sports event like World or European championships, the representative teams are accompanied by a team of journalists to convey the correct information to their country. Where was the team of Albanian journalists at the Olympiad of v. 1972 in Munchen?

Anyway, David Wallechinsky was later able to track him (Pampuri) down and interview him in his native Albania, where he worked as a circus clown.

Some of our sports journalists, showing their ignorance and arrogance, often want to present themselves to the public as the only way to stand out as masters in this field!

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The Albanian champion, Ymer Pampuri, was born in Tirana on April 30, 1944.

His passion as a child was the circus and acrobatics. From a young age, probably at 7, he became part of the Tirana Circus as a acrobat (1951).

He was an amateur acrobat, but by 1962 Pampuri became a professional and managed to secure a job in the Albanian State Circus. Thus, his life will take another direction

The one who will discover his talent to become a champion in weightlifting is another great name of the Albanian circus, master Telat Agolli. Mr. Agolli will train him for hours in the gym.

 The results will not be long in coming. At the age of 20, Pampuri became the champion of Albania in weight of 120 Kg with his former team “17 Nentori”.

 The first time he participated in the competition and won. Two years later, together with a team of 10 people, they left for specialization in distant China, which, although it did not participate in weightlifting championships, had experience in this type of sport, especially in terms of technique. “The Chinese experience was very useful, from the Chinese we learned more about the weightlifting technique”, will say later the champion Pampuri. It was always about the force style, which was still applied at the time. The year 1972 will be the most successful year for the Albanian weightlifting champion.

 He will be a World Champion in 1972, in 60 Kg Pres, and only an Olympic Record Breaker in the same year, 1972 in the Olympic Games! It is also the runner-up of European Championship (1972), in 60 Kg Class.

 First medal!

In 1972 Ymer Pampuri would represent Albania in the European Championship that was organized in Costanza, Romania. The Albanian team generally had athletes and coaches without much experience. Albania was presented there for the first time. Pampuri is declared runner-up with a weight of 125 kilograms in Press style, the same as the first place, won by the polish Henryk Trebicki, but then body weight made the difference. They both lifted, 125.0 Kg.  However, Pampuri who won the silver medal, left behind the great champion of the Soviet Union, Dito Shanitze, in third place (122.5Kg).

Olympic record in the Olympic Games!

In the summer of 1972, when Ymer Pampuri and his coach, Zydi Mazreku, declared before leaving for the Munich Olympics that they would go to Germany to get medals, many of the Albanian sports leaders at that time laughed. The statement of Pampuri and his coach became the subject of debate by many officials in the Ministry of Youth and Sports. There were also those who wanted Pampuri not to go, as he was not mentally well.

 Even though he had previously achieved good results, no one thought that an Albanian sportsman could get a medal in Munich or set records. Well, Pampuri had managed to make a good physical and technical preparation, and together with the coach they had confidence. But the leaders of the sport thought that this statement of Pampuri was just a delusion.

They even called him crazy and for this reason they asked him to visit a neurologist before leaving for Germany. Together with the coach, they go to the doctor Bajram Preza, undergoing several medical visits. In conclusion, Dr. Preza said that he was healthy and could participate in the Munich Olympics.

He didn’t really come back with a medal from the Olympics, but he managed to lead the race for a long time and even broke the world record.

 27-year-old Ymer Pampuri, was one of the four members of the Albanian Olympic team (the other three were from the shooting sport), who participated for the first time in the Olympic Games.

In “The complete book of the Summer Olympics” (Sydney 2000 Edition) Mr. Wallechensky writes:

Feather Weight 62 Kg – 135.5 lbs. Munchen: June 29, 1972

“This division saw the rare appearance of an athlete from Albania, Ymer Pampuri, a circus clown, broke the Olympic record in press and actualy led the competition  after the first round due to his lower bodyweight. However, the snatch and the jerk were not practiced in Albania and Pampuri could not do better than 12-th and 10-th place in those disciplines. Pampuri wound up in 9-th place” (p. 832-833)

So, in this race, our Pampuri broke the Olympic Record, (127.5 Kg) but then after , Pampuri’s result was tied by the winner of the race, Bulgarian Norair Nurikian (127.5 O.R / 117.5 Snatch/157.5 Jerk W.R / Total Kg. 402.5 EWR); the second place was taken by the Soviet from Georgia, with these results: Press, 127.5 O.R / Snatch, 120.0 / Jerk, 152.5 / Total, 400.0 Kg.

Table Final Standings:

World Champion – 1972 and the rest of his career!

To clarify all the readers of this article as below regarding the gold medal and the title of world champion for our Pampuri

The 1972 Men’s World Weightlifting Championships were held in Munich, West Germany from August 27 to September 6, 1972. There were 188 men in action from 54 nations. This tournament was a part of 1972 Summer Olympics but counted as World Weightlifting Championships too. Only total medals counted for Olympic Games while Snatch and Clean & Jerk medals counted for the World Weightlifting Championships.

Pampuri competes in the 60 Kg weight class. Alongside with the Albanian, are competing the great world champions for time, such as the Georgian Dito Shanitze, the Bulgarian Nurykian, the Polish Woynovsky, the Japanese Miyake, the Hungarian Benedek.

In the Press discipline, Ymer Pampuri lifted 127.5 kg. In fact, both Shanitze and Nurikyan have the same quotas, but only in the lightest body weight category, Pampuri wins gold medals and the title of world champion.

This is a great victory that will confuse the entire Albanian press and media, considering Pampuri the Olympic champion and “denying” him the title of world champion until 2001.

Despite the good memories of the trophies, he does not seem happy about them, since in his life those medals have not brought material value. After one month, Ymer Pampuri became “Deserved Master of Sports” by the Sports Federation.

Pampuri did not give up weightlifting even after the discount of the Press discipline by the World Federation. He started practicing Snatch style and managed to win a silver and two bronze medals in the Balkan Championships. He didn’t have the success, but he was already a world-class weightlifter.

In 1974, he would have a health accident, a thread thrombosis after a training session, an illness that would keep him in serious condition for a month. In 1975, he had to go through another trial by doing a miniscule (knee) operation in the distant state of China. After the surgery, the doctors had given up hope of ever holding the barbell again.

But the Albanian champion managed to lift 135 kilograms after the operation and the last record that Pampuri broke was 138 kilograms in snatch style in 1975 in Bulgaria. He would not give up the barbell until he was 33 years old.

In 1981, he finally gave up the sport that had given him so many emotions for several consecutive years and returned to the Tirana Circus, where he would retire at the age of 50.

Retirement and the difficult life of the champion

Since receiving the title of World Champion, Ymer has felt forgotten and unappreciated, even though he remains the only one in the history of Albanian weightlifting, declared World Champion. Here are the vicissitudes of an Albanian athlete, who trained with an empty stomach and unwashed overalls on his body and who carries with him the hostages of an unrewarded life. After retiring in 1994, Ymer Pampuri sought to work for a living. In order to make ends meet, Ymer Pampuri, although tired, got a job as a laundry worker in an enterprise. While later he worked as a guard at the Institute of Mathematics.

Ymer Pampuri, passed away on January 17, 2017, from a cardiac arrest!

 New York: November 1-st, 2024

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