Last week in Rio den Janeiro, Nijat Rahimov shattered the world record in the clean and jerk with a 224kg lift that cemented a gold medal. While fans expect that such achievements would have an emotional impact on the athlete, few expected the Kazakh weightlifter to break out the traditional Caucasus dance known as the lezginka.
Rahimov, who was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a naturalized Kazakhstani citizen who competed for Azerbaijan at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics and the 2013 Junior World Weightlifting Championships. Given his cultural background is from the South Caucasus, it came as no surprise that Rahimov selected the lezginka as his celebratory dance.