Hou Zhihui

Hou Zhihui, born on March 18th, 1997, is a distinguished Chinese weightlifter that competes mostly in the women’s 49 kg category. She’s an Olympic champion, World champion, and two-time Asian champion. Throughout her career, she has set 11 senior world records. Hou’s achievements include sweeping gold medals at the IWF World Cup, setting multiple world records, and winning gold at the 2020 Summer Olympics, where she set new world records in the snatch, clean and jerk, and total. 

Her career highlights started when she competed in the 49 kg women’s division at the 2018 World Weightlifting Championships. She won silver medals in all lifts and set two world records in the total. In 2019, she competed at the IWF World Cup in Fuzhou, China, where she got gold medals in all lifts and set new world records in the snatch and total, which clearly showed that she was one of the top lifters in her category. 

2021 was a big year for her because she achieved one of her most significant accomplishments. She competed in the 49 kg category at the 2020 Summer Olympics and won China’s second gold medal in this division. She set new Olympic records in the snatch, clean and jerk, and total with 210 kg, which was just 3 kg short of her world record set at the 2020 Asian Weightlifting Championships. 

She continued showing her excellence in 2022 when she won the bronze medal in the women’s 49 kg event at the World Weightlifting Championships held in Bogota, Colombia. 

But her career was not all smooth sailing and there was some controversy. On July 26th, 2021, just after her Olympic victory, Indian news outlet ANI wrongly reported that Hou would be tested by the International Testing Agency (ITA) for doping. This report suggested that if Hou’s test was positive, the silver medalist, Mirabai Chanu from India, would be upgraded to gold. This claim was then propagated across various news networks. 

However, the World Anti-Doping Agency and ITA debunked these reports and stated that no such tests were conducted and that any developments would be transparently reported on their site. ANI later retracted their report and cited an inadvertent error.