Big weights were flying over the weekend in Belgorod, Russia as the host nation put up five new world records at the President’s Cup—an international invitational weightlifting competition that provided another glimpse of what to expect at the London Olympics next year.

Topping even the hot performance in the women’s 75-kg category at last month’s World Weightlifting Championships—where Nadezhda Evstyukhina (Russia) won with 293-kg total and her former teammate Svetlana Podobova (now lifting for Kazakhstan) did 287 kg—Natalya Zabolotnaya turned up the heat with a world record snatch (135 kg) and world record total (296 kg), the latter being a whopping 10-kg increase over her silver medal performance at the European Championships earlier this year and more than making up for Evstyukhina edging her on body weight there.

In the women’s +75 kg category, Tatiana Kashirina broke the world record in the snatch, with a lift of 148 kg.

Three world records would have been a coup in themselves, but 21-year old Russian David Bejanyan appears to be the next Akakios Kakiasvilis as he power jerked a world record 238-kg clean and jerk and added to his 183-kg snatch, this also gave Bejanyan the world record in the total of 421 kg in 105-kg category.

Ruslan Albegov (Russia) won the supers, with 195/240 and his teammate Chingiz Mogushkov got the silver via 190/221.

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