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There's the ancient Greek weightlifter Bibon who went down in history for his feat of lifting a 150kg stone, Milo of Croton who built up strength by dragging growing cows up hills for weeks on end, and now there's Rasha Talahadze.
Talahadze admits he can't remember what it feels like to lose, just as his rivals have completely forgotten how to win.
When it comes to big Olympic names, there's no one like Georgia weightlifter Talahadze.
The World's Strongest Man dominated again in Paris to claim his third Olympic title, extending his unbeaten streak to nine years in the making.
Talahadze, who stands 6ft 6in and weighs about 28 stone, lifted much more weight than that to beat Armenia's Varasdat Malayan in a bout of big men taking centre stage.
Weightlifting is full of tantrums and tears, and the bigger the tantrum, the more emotional the person seems to be.
“This is the most valuable medal of my sports career and the most important thing in my life,” Talahadze said.
“It's very emotional. It's a very emotional moment in my life. It was the hardest competition for me because I had a lot of injuries before the Olympics. I didn't think this was possible, but I tried to believe.”
“Right now I just try to feel this happiness and, if my physical abilities allow, of course I will continue with this sport.”
“Winning a third gold medal was my biggest wish and big hope. Now I'm aiming for a fourth.”
Georgia's Lasha Talakhadze competes in the men's 102kg weightlifting event. (AP)
Three years ago in Tokyo, Tarahaze broke Olympic records in two elements of the event – the snatch (winning two lifts in one) and the clean and jerk (first lifting a weight to his chest and then thrusting it upwards) – by lifting an astounding 488kg.
In Paris, Talakhadze missed his opening snatch in the 210 kg category, his first Olympic Games failure, so shocked that one Georgian journalist slammed his desk in frustration and crouched down with his head in his hands for several minutes.
But he thrived in the 215kg division, with a clean and jerk best of 255kg, beating his nearest rival by a total of seven kilos.
His winning weight of 470kg was short of his best result in Tokyo but was enough to fend off all challengers for the title.
Georgia's Lasha Talakhadze, silver medalist Varasdat Lalayan of Armenia, and bronze medalist Gor Minasian of Bahrain (EPA)
Weightlifting is a hellish sport of metric and imperialism, especially from a country that prefers to measure itself in sugar bags.
So think of Tarahaze's feat as the equivalent of lifting one-tenth of a hippopotamus, or 150 bricks, 6,714 croissants or 2,473 croquettes.
His unbeaten streak dates back to the 2015 World Championships, where he won the gold medal, but only after the original winner, Alexei Lovchev, was disqualified for a doping test for the growth hormone ipamorelin.
And that's the problem with weightlifting: seeing speaks a thousand words, but it's often best not to believe what you see.
Three years ago, Talakhadze was the subject of a German TV documentary, “Secret Doping – King of the Lifters,” which claimed he had not undergone doping tests in competitions, a claim the Georgian Weightlifting Federation strongly denied.
Georgia's Rasha Talahadze performs the clean and jerk (Getty Images)
In the 10 years leading up to 2019, 565 weightlifters were penalized for doping violations, including Talahadze. The 2015 world championships in Houston was Talahadze's first major competition since serving a two-year suspension for using the anabolic steroid stanozolol as a teenager.
Weightlifting has received multiple final warnings from the International Olympic Committee over doping issues, but it seems to be more sanctioned than any other sport, is widely televised and tickets always sell out first.
As a result of new sample analysis and the concealment of test results, more than 30 weightlifters who reached the podium at the Beijing and London Olympics have been disqualified and stripped of their medals.
The sport, along with boxing, is this Olympics' problem child: weightlifting was finally allowed to take place in Los Angeles four years after a series of major governance overhauls, but the number of athletes in Paris is less than half what it was eight years ago.
But as a visual spectacle, it is sport at its purest.
It's breathtaking to watch an athlete stretch every muscle, engage his temples and explosively push weight over his head.
Georgia's Lasha Talakhadze competes in the men's +102kg weightlifting event (AFP via Getty Images)
And it takes brains as well as brawn, it takes mental toughness, the confidence that you can overcome even the heaviest of burdens.
And in a deeply flawed sports world, there is no one better than the genius Talahaze.
You can watch every moment of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games live, exclusively on discovery+, the streaming home of the Olympics.
