Known as the "Pocket Hercules", Turkey's Naim Süleymanoğlu is regarded by many as being the greatest weightlifter of all time.

The three-time Olympic gold medallist has been described as the strongest man who has ever lived, pound-for-pound, and stood at only four foot, 10 inches high.

He was born in Bulgaria but defected to Turkey during a trip to the World Cup Final in Melbourne in 1986, following a law which required ethnic minorities to adopt local names and banned other languages.

Süleymanoğlu, who had been forced to call himself Naum Shalamanov, became only the second person to lift three times his own bodyweight overhead in 1984.

He set 32 world records before he was 22 and won the first of his Olympic titles at 60kg in Seoul in 1988, when his peformance would have seen him win the weight division above.

At Barcelona 1992 he won another 60kg gold and he was then successful at 64kg at Atlanta 1996.

In Atlanta, he was part of a thrilling battle with Greece's Valerios Leonidis which saw the pair exchange three world record lifts at the end of the competition.

This was described as the "greatest weightlifting competition in history". 

Süleymanoğlu won seven overall world and seven European titles and broke 46 world records in all.

He failed in an audacious bid for an unprecedented fourth Olympic weightlifting gold at Sydney 2000.

After his career he went into politics, and he received the Olympic Order in 2001.

Süleymanoğlu died in 2017, aged only 50.