Weightlifting Giant Naim Suleymanoglu, 50

(ATR) Thousands turn out in Istanbul to honor the Olympic champion known as the Pocket Hercules.

Three-time Olympic weightlifting champion Naim Suleymanoglu died last week after more than a month of hospitalization marked by liver failure.

Bulgarian-born of Turkish parents in 1967, he was a teenaged weightlifting phenomenon for Bulgaria. Suleymanoglu was 15 when he set his first world record.

At 4 feet 10 inches, 147 cm, it’s easy to see how his nickname fit. He could lift three times his 62 kg body weight.

But as a member of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, he chafed at the discrimination faced by his family and other Turks in the country. While attending the weightlifting world championships in Melbourne Australia in 1986, the 18-year-old featherweight fled to the Turkish consulate.

Granted asylum, the government of Turkey paid Bulgaria $1 million to drop nationality claims, allowing him to compete for Turkey at the 1988 Olympics. He won Turkey’s first gold medal in 20 years in Seoul and became the nation’s most decorated Olympian with gold at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics as well. Suleymanoglu competed at Sydney but failed to medal.

The funeral at the Faith Mosque was held under tight security, but thousands still came to the service broadcast live in Turkey.

IOC member and Turkish Olympic Committee President Ugur Erdener was among the sports leaders at the funeral that included Turkish Weightlifting Federation chief Tamer Taşpınar.

Other Olympians included Greco-Roman wrestling champipn Hamza Yerlikaya, weightlifting gold medalist Halil Mutlu and Greek weightlifter Valerios Leonidis, Suleymanoglu’s chief rival duringtheir competitive careers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not attend, but issued a statement saluting Suleymanoglu. Dozens of other government officials, including the prime minister and sports minister were at the service.

The International Weightlifting Federation expresses its condolences to Sulymanoglu and his family via a statement on the IWF website.

No official explanation has been provided from Turkish medical experts as to any extraordinary circumstances that may have led to the organ failures behind the Olympian’s death.Liver failure has been tied to use of anabolic steroids and other PEDs, but Suleymanoglu never was implicated in any doping during his career.

Soon after his first gold medal in Seoul in 1988 where the Ben Johnson scandal exploded, Suleymanoglu, who smoked cigarettes, was quoted in the New York Times rejecting the need to dope.

''Steroids are used in other sports, too. I am comfortable that if Ben Johnson is caught, it doesn't mean all track athletes use steroids.

''But I have said, it is not the athletes competing now, but the doctors. In the end, only the athlete is penalized, and that is wrong. Steroids are a shortcut, but you don't need them. I never did.''

Regardless of Suleymanoglu’s disavowal of doping, the Olympic sport of weightlifting is battling to keep its place on the program of the Summer Games.

Turkey is one of nine countries the IWF has banned from competition for one year over repeated doping violations. The other eight include Russia, China,Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Turkey, and Ukraine.

The federation will review the changes it has made in the past year to address concerns from the IOC at its Congress November 27 in Anaheim, California. The IOC has given the weightlifting federation until next month to demonstrate that it’s anti-doping policies comply with international standards.

Reported by Ed Hula.