Charles Rigoulot

3 November 1903 – 22 August 1962 · Le Vésinet, Yvelines, France

Charles Rigoulot was the Olympic gold medallist in the light-heavyweight class at Paris in 1924, a multiple world record holder, and the first lifter known to have cleaned Apollon's Wheels from the floor to the shoulders — an implement that had defeated every challenger for the thirty years since Apollon retired it.

Origins

Rigoulot was born in Le Vésinet, on the western outskirts of Paris, in November 1903. He came from a working-class family and worked as a mechanic and a wrestler in his teens before being introduced to formal weightlifting by Edmond Desbonnet, the principal figure in early French strength culture and the man who had also chronicled Apollon. He was already strong enough by his late teens to compete at international level.

The work

Rigoulot competed for France through the 1920s. At the 1924 Paris Olympics, lifting in the 82.5 kg class, he won the gold medal in the five-lift Olympic format then in use, with a total of 502.5 kg across the one-hand snatch, one-hand jerk, two-hands press, two-hands snatch, and two-hands clean and jerk. He set world records in several of these lifts in the years either side of the Games, including a one-hand snatch of 115 kg and a two-hands clean and jerk of 167.5 kg.

He turned professional in 1925 and toured the French and Belgian music-hall circuit through the late 1920s and 1930s, performing as a strongman and giving exhibitions of the lifts. Later in life, in the 1950s, he became a successful professional wrestler.

"Apollon's bell is heavy in the air. The trouble is the bar."

Notable feats

Rigoulot's documented figures include:

• Olympic gold medal, light-heavyweight class, Paris 1924.
• World record one-hand snatch of 115 kg (253 lb).
• World record two-hands clean and jerk of 167.5 kg (369 lb).
• Clean and jerk of Apollon's Wheels (a 366 lb / 166 kg pair of railway-axle dumbbells with a 1.93 in handle), Paris, 3 January 1930. The first known clean of the implement after Apollon's own.
• Subsequent successful clean and jerks of the wheels in 1931 and 1933.

The Apollon's Wheels lift is the feat for which Rigoulot is best remembered outside competitive weightlifting circles. Apollon had performed the lift only as a stage piece, raising the bell to his shoulders. Rigoulot was the first to perform it as a clean and jerk to overhead. The lift was witnessed by the French federation, by Desbonnet, and by Apollon's surviving family. Rigoulot succeeded after several attempts, and credited the success to specific grip preparation — chalking, hand pre-stretching, and several weeks of work with thick-handled barbells.

Method

Rigoulot trained under Desbonnet in the Parisian school's tradition: progressive heavy work in the Olympic lifts, careful attention to technique, regular performance practice. Desbonnet's published programmes for Rigoulot, scattered across La Culture Physique in the 1920s, are among the more legible technical records of pre-war Olympic-style training. Rigoulot himself wrote occasionally for the French strength press but never produced a substantial training book.

Legacy

Rigoulot connects two distinct phases of the Iron Game: the music-hall strongman culture that Apollon represented, and the modern Olympic lifting that emerged from the 1920 Antwerp and 1924 Paris Games. By cleaning the Apollon's Wheels he closed off a thirty-year-old open challenge; by winning Olympic gold he established that the modern federation lifter, with technique and a federation-standard bar, could match the music-hall figures of the previous generation. After his Olympic and stage careers, his second career as a French professional wrestler kept him a public figure into the 1950s. He died in Paris in August 1962.

Disputed and unresolved

The exact dates of Rigoulot's three Apollon Wheels lifts vary slightly between sources; the principal account is in Desbonnet's contemporary reporting in La Culture Physique and in Charles Smith's later summary in Iron Man. The first, January 1930, is firm. There has been some dispute about whether John Davis later replicated the lift in 1949: Davis cleaned and jerked the original wheels at a Paris exhibition, and the lift is well-attested. Several modern lifters (Schemansky, Kinnunen, Henry, Savickas) have performed the lift on the original or near-replica implements; Rigoulot remains the first.