Weightlifter Ota Zaremba, who died today at the age of 68, achieved the greatest success of his career at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, where he unexpectedly won gold in the one hundred kilogram weight class.
Thanks to this, he was one of the most popular athletes in Czechoslovakia at the time.
Later, he also knew the reverse side of success, due to health problems and lack of financial resources, he found himself at the bottom. And with broken health, the former world record holder fought until the end of his life.
The native of Karvina was introduced to weightlifting at the age of 15 by his brother Miloš. After his military service in Červená hviezda Praha, he returned to Baník Havířov, where he was taken on by coach Emil Brzóska.
Zaremba drew more attention to himself for the first time at the 1979 World Championships in Thessaloniki, where he won silver in the 100 kilogram category and took fourth place in the duel.
Nevertheless, no one counted on him at the games in Moscow the following year – which were marked by a boycott of Western countries.
The favorite of the entire competition was the local fighter and the original Soviet number two Igor Nikitin, who replaced David Rigert in the new Olympic weight category under 100 kilograms.
Zaremba already gained a two and a half kilogram advantage in the Nikitin market with a performance of 180 kg and continued his winning campaign in his otherwise weaker discipline – the throw.
He gradually got 205 over his head, which was his personal record at that moment, 210 and 215 kilos. And since Nikitin failed at 220 kg, there was a sensation in the world.
I gave it my all
In 1981, Zaremba broke the world record four times, but at the WC in Lille he dislocated his right elbow and had to undergo surgery. He did not return to the podium until three years later at the EC in Vitoria, where he finished fourth in the duel and won bronze in the market.
He ended his career due to health problems in 1987, and despite later admitting to the use of steroids, he denied that doping was the problem.
“When it came to something, I trained until exhaustion. I put everything into it. It’s a huge amount of hard work and it also carries consequences,” he said.
He had to sell the Olympic gold
After the end of his career, he joined a mine, later glazed windows, worked in a security agency and also started a business, but he failed.
After a serious car accident in the mid-1990s, he was unemployed and living on only a partial disability pension, so he had to sell his Olympic gold.
After the doping confession, he had an argument with coach Brzóska, he lost both parents in a short period of time, and it was difficult for him to bear the fact that the state left him without help at a difficult time.
“When a person is hurt by something and is disappointed in life, he will say things he doesn’t want to. Journalists will come and want to take advantage of it. I was at the bottom mentally at the time, I basically found myself almost on the street,” he justified his immediate comments.
The last Olympic champion
In 2010, he joined the Workers’ Party of Social Justice, for which he unsuccessfully ran several times in the senate elections. He also ran a weightlifting school in Horná Suchá for a while.
Zaremba was one of three Czech weightlifters who won Olympic gold – and the last one. The first Olympic champion was Jaroslav Skobla at the Los Angeles Games in 1932, who won the category over 82.5 kilograms.
In 1964, he was succeeded by Hans Zdražila, who won gold in the middleweight category up to 75 kilograms in Tokyo. And then only Zaremba.
When the best Czech weightlifter of the 20th century was chosen at the turn of the millennium, it was obvious that he would become one of the three Olympic champions. In the end, the choice fell on Zdražila.
