Halil Mutlu

Halil Mutlu is a Turkish weightlifter born in Bulgaria on 14 July 1973 under the name Halil Aliev, nicknamed "Dinamo". He is one of only four weightlifters in history to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals — at Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 — a five-time world champion who set more than 20 world records, and he has lived in Ankara since the early 1990s. ^{1 2}

Mutlu was born to an ethnic Turkish family in the village of Postnik near Momchilgrad (Mestanlı), in Bulgaria's Kardzhali Province. He began weightlifting at the age of ten under his coach İbrahim Elmalı, and took the weightlifter Naim Süleymanoğlu as his role model. Under the pressure of Bulgaria's assimilation campaign against its Turks he stopped training for two years, then came to Turkey in December 1989. ^{3 1}

Mutlu won the Olympic gold medal at three consecutive Games: Atlanta 1996 in the 54 kg class, Sydney 2000 in the 56 kg class, and Athens 2004 in the 56 kg class — a feat only a handful of weightlifters have achieved in the history of the Games. ⁴ He was world champion five times, in 1994, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2003, won nine senior European titles between 1994 and 2005, and broke more than 20 world records across the 52, 54 and 56 kg classes. ¹

In 2005 the International Weightlifting Federation banned him for two years after a test found nandrolone; Mutlu insisted that he had never knowingly taken steroids. ¹ He withdrew from the trials for the Beijing 2008 Olympics because he felt unready, and announced his retirement on 31 October 2008. ³

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