"In 1961, when I was 14 years old, I had the chance to attend the World Weightlifting Championships in Vienna. Yury Petrovich Vlasov won the world-championship title, becoming the first human being to lift 200 kilograms over his head. Somehow, a friend of mine got me backstage. All of a sudden a 14-year-old boy was standing in front of the strongest man in the world. I couldn’t believe it. He reached out to shake my hand. I still had a boy’s hand. He had this powerful man’s hand that swallowed mine, but he was kind. And he smiled at me. I never forgot that day. I went home and put his photo above my bed. It inspired me when I started lifting weights, but it angered my father. He didn’t like Russians, because of his experience in the Second World War, when he was injured in Leningrad. (the Nazi army that he was part of did vicious harm to that great city and to its brave people.) My father told me to take Petrovich’s picture down, and to find a German or Austrian hero. But I did not take the photograph down, because it didn’t matter to me what flag he carried."