IWF120y/86 – 2024: History in the making for Karlos Nasar (BUL)

It is not frequent to report on a 20-year-old athlete, still active and necessarily at the beginning of his career, in a series of historical milestones of an international federation. Karlos Nasar, from Bulgaria, has 1/6 of the IWF age, but the indicators and results so far indicate that we are writing about a lifter who will surely be part of the history books. Issued from a nation with a great tradition in weightlifting, Nasar is a prodigy in our Sport, having already won one Olympic, two world, and three European titles. In Paris, at last year’s Olympics, the Bulgarian ace was clearly above the rest of the field in the men’s 89kg! On his way to a 14kg-difference comfortable victory, he lifted 180kg in the Snatch, 224kg in the Clean & Jerk (a new World Record), and 404kg in Total (also a new best global mark). His performance was only 2kg lower than the winner in the 102kg… Besides the Olympic gold medal, he was also the champion in the 2021 and 2024 editions of the IWF World Championships, and climbed on another three occasions to the highest march of the podium at the European level (2023, 2024, and 2025). His major career hiccup until now is the performance at the 2022 Worlds, where he bombed out in the Snatch, but still found enough motivation to set a new WR in the C&J (220kg). Born in Paris in May 2004 to a Bulgarian mother and Lebanese father, Nasar is the current holder of 15 World Records (five in each of the age groups – senior, junior, and youth).