How much can a human being lift? A Bayesian latent capability model for Olympic weightlifting
Abstract
Estimates of the limits of human performance are usually built on record books, on the premise that a record is the best an athlete could do. In Olympic weightlifting the premise fails, because the competitor declares the weight before each of three attempts per lift and only the heaviest successful attempt is recorded, so a record is a lower bound, chosen by the athlete, on a maximal capability never observed. We treat the maximal lift of each competitor on each competition day as a latent variable, of which every attempt is a trial and every declared weight a measurement. Its distribution at a given bodyweight follows an extreme value mixture model with an estimated threshold, and an athlete-specific random effect links the competitions of each athlete. The model is fitted to the 117,892 attempts of 5,040 athletes in 141 international competitions between 2017 and 2026. The upper tail of capability is bounded, with posterior probability above 0.999 for men, 0.96 for the women's snatch and 0.94 for the women's clean and jerk. At 110 kilograms of bodyweight the men's ceiling lies one to three per cent above the heaviest lifts, against twelve and sixteen per cent for women at 86 kilograms. The record book alone places the men's ceiling six and twelve kilograms higher, because the best lift of a day ending on a success overstates capability.
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BibTeX
@misc{leonelli2026much,
title = {{How much can a human being lift? A Bayesian latent capability model for Olympic weightlifting}},
author = {Manuele Leonelli},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.14032},
eprint = {2611.14032},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.14032},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - How much can a human being lift? A Bayesian latent capability model for Olympic weightlifting
AU - Manuele Leonelli
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/10
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.14032
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.14032
AB - Estimates of the limits of human performance are usually built on record books, on the premise that a record is the best an athlete could do. In Olympic weightlifting the premise fails, because the competitor declares the weight before each of three attempts per lift and only the heaviest successful attempt is recorded, so a record is a lower bound, chosen by the athlete, on a maximal capability never observed. We treat the maximal lift of each competitor on each competition day as a latent variable, of which every attempt is a trial and every declared weight a measurement. Its distribution at a given bodyweight follows an extreme value mixture model with an estimated threshold, and an athlete-specific random effect links the competitions of each athlete. The model is fitted to the 117,892 attempts of 5,040 athletes in 141 international competitions between 2017 and 2026. The upper tail of capability is bounded, with posterior probability above 0.999 for men, 0.96 for the women's snatch and 0.94 for the women's clean and jerk. At 110 kilograms of bodyweight the men's ceiling lies one to three per cent above the heaviest lifts, against twelve and sixteen per cent for women at 86 kilograms. The record book alone places the men's ceiling six and twelve kilograms higher, because the best lift of a day ending on a success overstates capability.
ER -